Can Drones Be Good?

It was a cool day in Dallas last November, when a small quadcopter lifted itself off the ground of an American Airlines hangar and buzzed towards a Boeing 737. The drone, a DJI Mavic Enterprise, had been outfitted with a spotlight, but otherwise looked a lot like what you might see your neighbor flying in the backyard. The remarkable difference was that this particular aircraft had been programmed to inspect the hull of the much larger aircraft, the jet. It could do in a matter of minutes what it would take a maintenance crew hours to do. It was, in its own way, a tiny flying robot with a job.

A small gaggle of journalists watched the drone slowly make its way around the airplane, spotting specially located indicators that resembled bullseyes on the fuselage and sending alerts back to a pilot. This was just a demo, though. The drone had been programmed to spot the innocent-seeming bullseyes, but the airline says it could just as easily spot damage. Currently, American and other airlines employ a group of workers on a cherrypicker to inspect aircraft between flights, but some think that drones could do the job just as well—or at the very least, drones could help streamline the process. That is, if the airline decides to make the demo a part of everyday operations.

“This is a tool of the future that should be in every professional technician’s toolbox,” said Lorne Cass, American Airline’s VP of Operations and Industry Affairs, who went

Article source: https://gizmodo.com/can-drones-be-good-1830831747

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Aircraft MRO Market 2019 Growth Along with Global Industry Size, Share, Trends, Key Drivers, Major Manufactures, Business Insights and Forecast 2023 – Press Release


Aircraft MRO Market Research Report 2019: Industry Size, Share, Trends, Growth and Opportunity Assessment, Regional Analysis and Segmentation By MRO Type (Engine, Component, Line Maintenance, Airframe, and Modifications), By Aircraft type (Narrow-body, Wide-body, and Others), By Application (Commercial Air Transport, Business and General Aviation, and Military Aviation) and by Region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa, and Latin America) – Forecast to 2023

Aircraft MRO Market Overview

Over the years, the aviation industry has been witnessing a steady growth, owing to the increased diversification among airlines, across the globe. Of late, passenger traffic is expanding with resilience across the globe, despite a slight slowdown in the global economy. Large markets, such as the U.S., Europe, and Asia witness increased expenses by the passengers, due to the rising income levels of the expanding middle class population in these regions.

Moreover, global air travel is made easy and available by low cost carriers, whilst airlines are increasing the services to various geographical locations. This results in an increased focus on the expansion of aviation industry, around the world. As of 2016, there were over 23,000 airplanes in service, and this number is expected to double itself, over the next 20 years. To achieve this growing demand of commercial aviation, it is important for global aircraft engine manufacturers to manufacture innovative engines that are more fuel efficient, and have more operational ranges.

Get Sample Report with Complete TOC @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/sample_request/1560 

Air travel in emerging countries is growing, thus increasing

Article source: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/4114574

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What About This . . .? By Wayne William Cipriano

Whenever we go anywhere in the car, I always seem to be the one who does the driving. It’s not that I like driving so much (I don’t), or that my control issues extend to operating the car (they don’t), or that my innate chauvinism is showing (it’s not), or that I am trying to acquire the chauffeur “benefits” that we note in every romance novel (ok, maybe that one a little bit). It’s mostly just habituation. It’s always been like that. 

The other day when Rosalie said she’d like to drive to Springfield, I was mildly surprised and completely amenable to her choice. And that was how I got to see and pay attention to so much roadside stuff that I never do when I am concentrating on driving.

I’m not sure how much I saw for the first time, but there was some for sure, as I looked beyond the limits of the highway and off to the sides. Cattle way off on hillsides, deer moving through the trees, lots of houses and barns I never knew were there. And each exclamation of mine at something “new” was met with Roasalie’s somewhat distracted, “Yes, I know…” as she concentrated on her task and I rubbernecked.

I saw a small field in the center of a copse of trees sporting an orange wind sock! Too confined for full-scale airplanes, maybe model planes or drones – or perhaps full-scale helicopters? And what’s the deal with those big orange “beachballs” attached to high-voltage

Article source: https://douglascountyherald.com/2019/01/what-about-this-by-wayne-william-cipriano-20/

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From Hovercrafts to Personal Submarines, 5 Made-to-Order Machines for an Epic Adventure

There’s a new way to play. The world’s most intrepid adventurers are no longer content to join the masses on a hike to Machu Picchu or a dive to the Great Barrier Reef. Instead, they’re hacking together epic toys that can go farther, faster, higher, and deeper than anything else. From a monster icebreaker that can crash through ’bergs to a souped-up submersible designed for the deepest dives, these custom crafts are going above, beyond, and all the way.

The Icebreaker

The Soviet-era icebreaker was in a sorry state when Jan Verkerk first laid eyes on it. The 254-foot commercial vessel was as fashionable as you’d expect coming out of Cold War Russia—baroque, colonial, and covered in mahogany—but the CEO of the Netherlands’ Unlimited Yacht Charter saw potential in it to fulfill a master plan. “I wanted to make a perfect boat for every type of expedition imaginable,” Verkerk says. So, he set about building Legend, a rare vessel that can break through the glaciers of Greenland just as easily as it can rub bows with oligarchs’ yachts in the Bahamas.

It took three years, but Verkerk, along with designer Thom Beerens, managed to transform the old junker into a sort of seafaring Frankenstein: a luxurious superyacht brimming with excess, but built from the steel bones of a Class 1 ice-breaking beast. Customized for extreme conditions, with a specialized hull, heating systems, propellers, and water-tide doors, the ship is outfitted with an arsenal of expeditionary toys—WaveRunnners, a helicopter, and a

Article source: https://robbreport.com/travel/destinations/hovercrafts-personal-submarines-5-custom-vehicles-for-epic-adventure-2838022/

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Airbus steps up pressure on suppliers over Canadian jet

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Europe’s Airbus is ratcheting up pressure on suppliers like United Technologies to cut costs for its Canadian-developed A220 jetliner as it expands factory facilities to cope with anticipated demand for the former Bombardier model.

Long seen as low on the list of priorities for top suppliers as Canada struggled to break into the main airliner market, the A220 now has the clout of the world’s second largest planemaker behind it after Airbus bought the loss-making project last year.

Philippe Balducchi, head of an Airbus-led venture which took over production last July, said the planemaker was looking for a “significant double-digit” percentage reduction in costs but played down suggestions that it could slash costs by half.

Speaking at the Mirabel airplane plant outside Montreal which Bombardier now shares with Airbus, Balducchi indicated the bulk of the reduction in costs would come from the supply chain as Airbus uses its greater clout in negotiations for parts.

Other savings would come from more efficient operations as workers gain experience of building the lightweight 110-130-seat jet, whose deliveries doubled to 33 aircraft last year.

However, overall economies will go “way beyond” what Airbus can achieve internally on the assembly line, Balducchi said.

“Our focus is to sell, ramp up (production) and reduce costs on the A220,” Rob Dewar, head of engineering and customer support, added during a media briefing on the jet, which was known as the CSeries until Airbus took control in July 2018.

Cutting costs is

Article source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airbus-canada/airbus-steps-up-pressure-on-suppliers-over-canadian-jet-idUSKCN1P81VE

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The Flight That Changed Everything | History

America’s youngest jet-setter was seven years old when he boarded a Pan American World Airways Boeing 707 in New York, headed to Paris. It was October 26, 1958 and along with his parents and two older sisters, Loren Hopkins was on an all-expenses-paid, two-week tour of European capitals. His mother won the trip after entering a contest printed on the back of a Kellogg’s cereal box.

“She always had a desire to see other places,” said Hopkins, now 68 and a farmer in Kinsman, Ohio, of his mother, Vera. But she’d married a farmer, and their livelihood did not promise a life of travel. “For my mother to fly on a jet plane was the adventure of a lifetime,” Hopkins said.

A U.S. Army band serenaded the flight’s 111 passengers that night in 1958 as they approached the air stairs leading to the jetliner at Idlewild Airport. Among them was a genuine celebrity, the actress Greer Garson, who’d won an Academy Award for her performance in Mrs. Miniver 16 years earlier. (On its return flight from Paris, that 707 would carry Frank Sinatra and Danny Kaye.)

“We walked to the airplane on a red carpet with flags on both sides,” Hopkins recalled of the rainy night. Floodlights accentuated the white aluminum airplane’s size: 140 feet long with a 130-foot wingspan. Its four Pratt Whitney JT3C-6 turbojet engines were sleek in polished metal nacelles suspended below and forward of the wings, rakishly angled 35 degrees off of the fuselage.

An enormous blue globe was

Article source: https://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/707-flight-changed-everything-180971219/

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Don Chadwick Went from Building Model Planes to Creating Silicon Valley’s Favorite Seat

Don Chadwick, 82, is an industrial designer and co-creator of Herman Miller Inc.’s Aeron chair. The ergonomic office seat was introduced in 1994 and first became popular with technology and Internet firms in the late 1990s. It is included in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection. He spoke with Marc Myers.

My first chair was nothing special. I was 12 when my parents bought me a standard desk and upholstered chair. Furniture design wasn’t a passion yet. I was more focused on building model trains and airplanes.

…

Article source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/don-chadwick-went-from-building-model-plans-to-creating-silicon-valleys-favorite-seat-11547566871

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