Letters from Rick Hughes and Gonzalo Mendoza (AW&ST Mar. 12, p. 7; Apr. 16, p. 8) have defended the need and use of this facility. A. Leroy Clarke (AW&ST Apr. 16, p. 8; Apr. 30, p. 6) suggested a consortium of users could purchase and operate the tunnel as the Southern California Cooperative Wind Tunnel was run. It was a great loss when that tunnel was closed.
Heidi Shyu (see photo) has been appointed vice president-corporate technology and research for the Raytheon Co., Waltham, Mass. She also will chair its Technology Leadership Council. Shyu was vice president/technical director for Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems.
BAE Systems has completed flight testing on a Bell 430 testbed aircraft of an obstacle detection system for helicopters that weighs less than 8 lb., not counting antennas, and can find obstacles both night and day at distances of greater than 2.5 km.
You can now register ONLINE for AVIATION WEEK Events. Go to www.aviationweek.com/conferences or call Lydia Janow at +1 (212) 904-3225/+1 (800) 240-7645 ext. 5 (U.S. and Canada Only) Oct. 17-18--MRO Asia, Shanghai. Oct. 29-31--A&D Programs, Phoenix. Nov. 6-8--MRO Europe, Milan. Nov. 28-29--A&D Finance Conference, New York. PARTNERSHIPS June 18-24--Paris Air Show. Sept. 24-28--International Aeronautical Congress, Hyderabad, India.
Iberia and American Airlines have begun the process of applying for anti-trust immunity to strengthen their collaboration, now that an open skies deal between the U.S. and EU is on its way to taking effect in March 2008. Iberia Chairman Fernando Conte Garcia says the first contacts have been established with American to prepare the paperwork for regulators to review, a process that should take less than a year.
China will launch three environmental monitoring satellites next year. Within two or three years, it will have seven satellites in orbit for monitoring ecological conditions, pollution and disasters, says the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp.
JetBlue Airways' debt rating was lowered by Moody's Investor Service. The agency cited the high level of debt JetBlue has assumed to expand its aircraft fleet and its failure to post a net profit "during a relatively good operating environment for airlines."
Astrobiology, which has seemed like the poor stepchild at NASA with Michael Griffin as administrator, has regained some ground under Alan Stern, the planetary scientist Griffin hired as the agency's new associate administrator for science.
Germany will likely have to confront thorny political issues as it grapples with the introduction of new endurance unmanned aircraft. The widely expected decision by the German government to meet a medium-altitude, long-endurance requirement with the purchase of the General Atomics Predator-B is only adding to the list of contentious topics on the horizon for military and political leaders. The go-ahead given in January to the EuroHawk unmanned aircraft also has sparked questions.
Richard Bardellini (see photo) has been promoted to vice president-manufacturing from operations manager for the Astro Div. of New Hampshire Ball Bearings Inc. in Peterborough. He succeeds Richard Fleczok, who will become an adviser before retiring.
The Army's new MH-47G special ops helos have been supporting troops in Afghanistan since March. The Army's 160th Special Operational Aviation Regiment deployed the new Boeing-made tandem rotor aircraft. The regiment's spokeswoman declined to state how many have been sent forward for service. In the first 75 days of operations there, the aircraft executed more than 460 flight hours. Its readiness rate exceeds 97%. The G-model is based on the Chinook airframe, with a new cockpit and selected airframe sections.
Philip A. Marquez (see photo) has been appointed vice president/assistant general counsel/sector counsel for the Northrop Grumman Corp.'s Los Angeles-based Space Technology Sector. He was head of legal services for the company's Unmanned Systems and High-Altitude Long-Endurance Systems, Rancho Bernardo, Calif.
The aviation community continues to denounce the criminalization of aircraft accidents, spurred by Brazil's handling of the Sept. 29, 2006, midair collision of an Embraer Legacy 600 and a Gol Boeing 737-800 over the Amazon jungle. The decision of Brazil's federal police on May 9 to recommend prosecution of the Legacy 600 pilots "for placing a vessel or aircraft in jeopardy" is meeting with strong protests.
Britain's Eurofighter partners are seeking assurances the U.K. will not use a pending Saudi sale to cut its own purchase. London would face a big financial penalty if it were to unilaterally curtail plans to buy a final batch of Typhoons.
Italy's second-largest airline, Air One, is accelerating its effort to become the country's leading carrier, with a significant fleet expansion. But the success of its ambitions will depend on whether it can prevail in a bid to buy its on-the-auction-block rival, Alitalia.
A European Commission proposal to fund the entire Galileo satellite navigation system with taxpayer money finally will put the controversial project on solid footing, if it is accepted by transport ministers and parliament.
European Space Agency (ESA) managers are working toward a mid-November launch for the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to the International Space Station. The "Jules Verne" ATV mission is contingent on resumption of ISS assembly with the STS-117 space shuttle mission in June, and completion of tests on the 20-ton robotic cargo vehicle in time for it to be shipped to the European launch facility in French Guiana in July.
Andy Nativi and Douglas Barrie (Genoa, Philadelphia and London)
AgustaWestland is facing a politically sensitive choice of where to locate a Boeing Chinook final assembly line, driven by the need for additional special forces and heavy-lift helicopters in Italy and the U.K.
The Star Alliance has formed a Technology Advisory Council and invited Nokia and Visa to be partners in an effort to explore new mobile phone technology for check-in and passenger information.
NASA's Orion next-generation human spacecraft project will lose about 1,000 lb. of the mass it carries to orbit with a newly adopted redesign of the service module that flies just aft of the pressurized crew capsule. Orion also may save some more weight toward its 25-ton target from an ongoing redesign of the boost protective cover that shelters the capsule during its fast, hot ride through the lower atmosphere, says Caris A. (Skip) Hatfield, NASA's project manager on the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).
The Pentagon is looking into possible duplicative unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) programs in the U.S. Army and Air Force. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tells Senate appropriators that he has ordered the Pentagon's Joint Requirements Oversight Committee to look into the Army's Warrior UAV and its similarities to the Air Force Predator.
Eurocontrol's Maastricht Upper Area Control Center now has Mode S radars located on the ground in Belgium, France and the Netherlands to interrogate aircraft and downlink the identification of each one using the elementary surveillance feature of the Mode S transponder on each aircraft.
In the discussion regarding the F-22 and the international date line, remember it likely wasn't the failure to use Coordinated Universal Time that caused the problem, for that is standard operating procedure. Rather it would have been the cal- culation of latitude and/or longitude by the navigation system's software. If the trigonometric function used to compute the loca- tion has a value that approaches or becomes zero and this value is used in the denominator of the calculation of the function, the result is a forbidden "divide-by-zero" situation.
Boeing has delivered a second C-17 to the Royal Australian Air Force. It will join No. 36 Squadron at RAAF Base Amberly. The remaining two C-17s are scheduled for delivery in 2008.
Thales hopes to parlay a simplified plug-and-play architecture for flight management systems into a stronger position in this market. The Paris-based aerospace and defense contractor broke into the FMS segment--long dominated by Honeywell--when it delivered second-generation Rev. 2 FMS units for Airbus A320, A330 and A340 transports, in partnership with Smiths Aerospace. The Thales/Smiths FMS2 features upgraded flight planning capability and display functionality plus a standard worldwide database.
