Model Airplanes

Keeping a Promise: Secretary Wynne Visits the FACO in Italy

2016-11-17 By Robbin Laird

Secretary Wynne recently visited, the Final Assembly and Check Out Facility, which has been built at Cameri Air Base near Milan.

When he last dealt with the FACO it was the germ of an idea in working through how best to involve Italy in the F-35 project.

Because the F-35 is not built around traditional offsets, given the plane is built differently from legacy aircraft, the question was how best for Italy to participate in the program.

In discussions with Italy, the idea emerged that Italy would stand up their own FACO for the assembly of the aircraft, and learn the skill sets which would naturally migrate into being a core maintenance center for future operations of the new aircraft.

With his visit in October 2016, Secretary Wynne was able to see first hand the results of the effort.

In a four-year period, the base saw a transformation from a dirt soccer field to one of the three final assembly plants in the world for the F-35, and the first built outside of the United States.

 Question: Take us back to the period where this project was first born.

 What was the thinking 10 years ago?

Secretary Wynne: When the F-35 program was being shaped the Italians were doing a first rate analysis of how this would affect them and whether they should be part of the program or not.

They were concerned, of course, that they would have an appropriate “offset,” given the money they

Article source: http://www.sldinfo.com/keeping-a-promise-secretary-wynne-visits-the-faco-in-italy/

An incredible amount of precision and accuracy is essential to building any machine. If this principle is ignored, it can cause a slew of problems. At the very least, it can cause your coffeemaker to overflow your mug — at worst, it can cause an airplane to fall apart. People like UBC mechanical engineering professor Dr. Yusuf Altintas, along with his team, are here to make sure the latter scenario is prevented by finding ways to make the manufacturing process more efficient.

Altintas’s work and research revolves around creating more efficient and precise methods of manufacturing parts for various industries. This typically entails creating better 3D modelling programs, designing controls for manufacturing robots or cutting metals more cleanly. At first glance, this may seem like relatively straightforward engineering, but the reality is a lot more cumbersome. It involves a lot of nearly flawless math, physics and many other complicated elements.  

“We look at the modelling of the machine, the model of the machine’s operations, predicting force-torque power vibrations, surface finish, errors coming from the machine, computer control and so on. The aim is to predict the machine operations ahead of costly physical trials,” said Altintas. “Typically, airplane parts are machined from solid blocks of aluminum and titanium. If they vibrate, then everything is broken, so we predict cutting conditions without any vibration.”

Looking at Altintas’ record of accolades and titles really emphasizes how important his field’s work is. He’s received global recognition — from Canada to Japan — and most of

Article source: http://www.ubyssey.ca/science/yusuf-altintas/

If you had seen the first time Slats Rodgers put his aeroplane up in the air, you wouldn’t have watched for long. He had to get the contraption up in the air to avoid a ditch, but up it went. And then down it came, once he had flown about 200 feet, the crash breaking off the wheels and the right wing of the biplane that sort of looked like the aeroplane the Wright brothers got aloft almost a decade earlier on the plains of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Although Floyd “Slats” Rodgers’ maiden flight in 1912 in the plane he called Old Soggy No. 1 for its drooping right wing was less than successful, or rather about as successful as other pioneering aviators of his time, the bed-slat thin man made his mark in Texas aviation history for what’s arguably Texas’s first manned flight.

As an aside, Rodgers and Orville and Wilbur Wright, might have a contender for being first in flight, according writer Clay Coppedge in his book “Hill Country Chronicles.” Almost 38 years before Kitty Hawk, a German immigrant to Texas, Jacob Brodbeck, designed and flew his steampunkish spring-powered plane sometime between 1865 and 1868 — accounts vary — either near Luckenbach or San Antonio.  

In Rodgers’ time, the skies over North Central Texas weren’t slashed with jet contrails and newspaper reporters described planes in the skies above Cleburne as novel sights.  

While Rodgers’ flight isn’t the only gold star pinned to aviation history’s bulletin board for Johnson County

Article source: http://www.cleburnetimesreview.com/news/first-in-flight-texas-style/article_07145876-ac4f-11e6-b240-bf8609c4734c.html

Director: Various

Cast: Various

US DVD: 15 Nov 2016

Amazon

Director: J. Searle Dawley

Cast: Margaret Marsh, Vernon Steel

US DVD: 25 Oct 2016

Amazon

Director: Julien Duvivier

Cast: Félicien Tramel

US DVD: 25 Oct 2016

Amazon

Director: Paul Leni

Cast: Laura La Plante, Montagu Love

US DVD: 25 Oct 2016

Amazon

Today we celebrate not only the silent era, but the cutting-edge entrepreneurs of the 21st Century who make these films available to new generations via on-demand digital technologies.

Accidentally Preserved

Funded by Kickstarter, Ben Model’s Undercrank Productions puts out streaming titles and made-on-demand discs with his own piano accompaniment. PopMatters reviewed the previous volume of his Accidentally Preserved series, and now he’s back with Volume 4.

The theme this time is a forgotten film format: the 9.5mm home market run by a European company called Pathescope. This small gauge, with sprockets in the middle of the film between frames,

Article source: http://www.popmatters.com/review/slapstick-thrills-spooks-and-camera-tricks-in-the-95mm-format/