Model Airplanes

Buffalo City Remote Control Squadron was revived when Mike Propeck and Dave Nelson of Jamestown took over the local club in 1985 after it had been inactive. The club has its own flying field on flood-plain land near the Pipestem Dam, which is under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and holds public events to entertain the public and promote the hobby.

“Fortunately, we’ve been able to make use of it for a flying field,” Propeck said. “The rocketry people also use it and so do the archery people.”

For around half a century a remote-controlled plane hobbyist would build an airframe from balsa wood and glue over the winter, Nelson said. Hobbyists would tinker with a gas engine and the “servos” that operate the control surfaces and throttle of the plane.

“That kind of airplane building is becoming a lost art,” Nelson said. “There are only one or two of us in the club that really build right now.”

The almost-ready-to-fly planes take just a little assembly work to get flying. He said electric motors and prefabricated plastic planes are more durable and easier to fly.

“I like the noise of the old gas or nitromethane engines,” Nelson said. “They are realistic looking planes and so that is what I fly.”

The new vertical flight aircraft are “the quads,” Propeck said. These are what people call small electric drones that don’t go over 400 feet high, he said.

“Drone is not correct terminology for quadcopters, hexacopters and octocopters,” Propeck said.

The flying club maintains

Article source: http://www.jamestownsun.com/news/local/4108824-remote-controlled-adventure

General Electric Co. placed a $1.4 billion bet on the future of factory production by purchasing a pair of 3D-printer companies, marking one of the most significant endorsements of the technology yet.

The industrial giant offered to buy Sweden’s Arcam AB and Germany’s SLM Solutions Group AG in separate transactions, GE said in a statement Tuesday. The acquisitions will bolster GE’s existing manufacturing operations and help the company build a $1 billion 3D-printing business by 2020, it said.

The move “adds to our strategy to become the premier digital industrial company,” Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt said on a conference call with analysts. “These two companies bring, in addition to just equipment, a number of ideas in terms of what we can do in the future.”

GE has reoriented its business around industrial manufacturing and complementary software, following moves to sell most of the finance and consumer-focused divisions. The Boston-based company, the world’s largest maker of jet engines and gas turbines, is making greater use of 3D printing for equipment parts and prototypes.

The global market for 3D printing is growing as companies increasingly use the technology for production of commercial parts. The aviation industry was one of the early adopters because it enables more complex designs and lighter parts, cutting waste of expensive materials on factory floors. GE said it expects to print 40,000 fuel nozzles for jet engines by 2020.

Parts Production

3D printers build objects by fusing together thin layers of materials such as plastic powder, metal or liquid resin. The parts, built

Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-06/ge-to-spend-1-4-billion-on-3-d-printer-makers-for-plane-parts

Sponsored Content by Huron Digital Pathology

Dr. Jacopo AnneseTHOUGHT LEADERS SERIES…insight from the world’s leading experts

Interview conducted by April Cashin-Garbutt, MA (Cantab)

Jacopo Annese, President and CEO of the Institute for Brain and Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to democratizing neuroscience and making neuroscience tools and knowledge about the brain more available to the public, discusses his work on the Human Brain Library.

In what ways can the human brain be studied?

There are currently two ways of looking at the human brain. We can look at the brain non-invasively, using techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computerized tomography.

Methods of Examining the Brain from AZoNetwork on Vimeo.

MRI is a wonderful technique because, although the resolution is low, it still allows quite a detailed view of the brain, while the person is alive.

You can use that to make decisions about treatment or to see what’s going on. However, as it’s very low resolution, not all the answers can be found.

The other way of looking at the brain is post-mortem, which is necessary when you want to see tissue at a microscopic level.

Histological techniques are used to process brain tissue and look at individual cells and fibers and thereby observe pathological phenomena that create disease.

For example, with Alzheimer’s Disease when you look at the brain using MRI, you can see shriveling, or a loss in mass, but you don’t really see the actual hallmark lesion of Alzheimer’s, which is

Article source: http://www.news-medical.net/news/20160825/Advances-in-brain-research-since-patient-HM-an-interview-with-Dr-Jacopo-Annese.aspx

The number of accidents involving Lithium-ion batteries have gone up, and major brands like Samsung and Tesla are at the forefront of them.

Recently, there has been an increase in Lithium-ion battery explosion incidents. Well, known companies like Samsung, Tesla, HP, etc. have fallen prey to this unexpected mishap. This has damaged the reputation of the brands and also put a question mark on the credibility of Lithium-ion cells.

Just a few days ago, Samsung announced a major recall of its latest flagship, the Galaxy Note 7 after users from various parts of the world reported of dangerous overheating and blowing up of their phones. The massive recall involves about 2.5 million units of the smartphone and would probably cost the Korean company about $1 billion. Samsung has stated that faulty batteries are the reason of the mishaps.

Tesla, one of the most innovative car maker, has faced similar kind of issue in their electric car when it burst into flames at a promotional event in France. The company also came to limelight in 2013 when some of its Model S sedans turned into the fireball after road debris damaged their batteries.

The Lithium-ion battery issue had even disrupted the aviation department when it caught fire on a Boeing 787 flight threatening the lives of its passengers. Soon after the airplane took off from Melbourne, Australia, smoke was seen coming out the cargo compartment.

Investigations confirmed that the fire was caused by some Lithium-ion batteries inside a passenger’s luggage. Since then, the Airplane authorities

Article source: http://www.inferse.com/43258/rise-in-lithium-ion-battery-explosions-question-its-reliability/

They say “life is short,” but if you’ve ever held a job you hated, you know how the afternoon hours between the end of lunch and quitting time can drag out like an eternity. The wall clock taunts you, its smallest hand moves too slowly. You want to grab it, smash the glass, and crank the hands until they read five-zero-zero, so you can bolt. It is all you can do not to look at it again and again, hoping the hands have carved out a larger chunk of clock face than the last time you looked—three minutes ago. Oh, and it’s only Monday; you’ve still got another four days to play this tedious game until the weekend arrives. Next Monday you’ll start it all over again.

Considering the average person will work for 50 years and each year contains about 260 work days, that works out to 13,000 days—or 104,000 hours on the job for each of us over our lifetimes. It’s wonderful world out there and we all have to work, so doesn’t it make sense to do something you enjoy?

Since you’re reading Car Craft, it is safe to assume you’re into cars. In the Jobs in Cars series, we’ll showcase a variety of career paths in the automotive realm and highlight some people who’ve followed them. This month, we’re visiting Paul Krauss, proprietor of PK Machine, a small but successful engine building shop in Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

The Beginning
Paul says a childhood encounter with a V8 Vega fueled his

Article source: http://www.hotrod.com/articles/jobs-cars-look-pk-machine/

Piaggio Aerospace insisted last month that it will keep producing and supporting the Avanti Evo. In an August 16 statement, the Italian manufacturer sought to reassure operators who appear to have been discouraged by a July 28 press release indicating that a new “industrial plan” will see the company focus primarily on military programs.

Annual deliveries of the civil version of the twin-turboprop pusher have dropped into the low single digits for the past several years. Some Avanti operators complained to AIN about poor product support, which they said makes them question Piaggio’s long-term commitment to the program.

“There is no plan to stop Evo production or customer support of the Avanti programs, after having borne the considerable development costs and finally starting the delivery period,” Piaggio Aerospace CEO Carlo Logli told AIN in a written statement.

This appeared to mark a change in emphasis from the July 28 statement in which the company hinted that it might walk away from the civil aircraft sector. “Military platforms provide a sustainable and scalable growth trajectory for Piaggio Aerospace, which has been severely impacted by the contraction of the business aviation market,” said Logli. At the time, the company noted that it would continue to deliver its existing commitments for the Avanti Evo, and when questioned further by AIN it responded only that “At present, the Avanti Evo will continue to be part of the Piaggio business.”

Piaggio says it has delivered four Avanti Evos so far this year. However, the latest shipment numbers from the

Article source: https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2016-08-22/piaggio-seeks-reassure-operators-over-avantis-future