Formålet med bloggen er å bidra til informasjon om luftfart av alle slag. Også litt om ubåter og forsvarsspørsmål. Nyheter vil du finne her også, en del på engelsk som er det mest brukte luftfartsspråket. Har du selv noe som bør komme ut, så send meg en mail til per.gram@hesbynett.no
UAM: Urban Aerial Mobility
Samad Aerospace hits major e-Starling milestone
with 1st flight of 50% scale demonstrator
Click here to see the video (FULLY ELECTRIC!)
Another crucial milestone has been met in SAMAD AEROSPACE’S Starling Programme. November 2020 has seen the successful conventional take-off and landing (CTOL) flight test of the company’s 50% scale fully electric aircraft.
Although the Covid-19 pandemic bought a chilling winter season to the aviation industry, Samad’s Starling project is blazing ahead, paving the path to commercialising the world’s first e-VTOL hybrid aircraft. Samad’s CEO, Dr Seyed Mohammad Mohseni, praises his team’s resilience attributing this latest success to their, “striking and unparalleled dedication during unprecedented times.” Samad’s Chief Production Officer explains, “We believe passionately in our proven technology, Covid-19 threw a few challenges our way, but this passion fuels our determination, securing this success.”
“CTOL trials are an essential step towards VTOL
aircraft development. Ticking off the CTOL flight capability is a crucial step
towards the validation of all flight modes. With CTOL trials complete, we will
begin hovering trials and the flight trials will be concluded by transition
between hovering flight and aerodynamic flight in both directions”
During the CTOL flight test (November 2020) the aircraft took off at a length of 250 meters, demonstrating a great potential for Short take-off and landing (STOL). Take-off and landing were smooth, and the vehicle maintained a comfortable cruise at a speed of (90 mph) airborne for over five minutes. Witnesses were amazed at just how quiet this aircraft was compared to a helicopter.
The flight tests included
evaluations on aircraft flight dynamics, performance as well as handling
qualities. As the e-Starling adopts a semi blended wing body (BWB)
design, it requires a low angle for take-off; it is important to understand
when the aircraft is capable of taking-off and at which speed.
Apart from slow and fast
taxiing on the runway as well as take-off and landing; the half scale
demonstrator also performed banking manoeuvres in addition to tests on yaw,
pitch and roll. The results show very stable in terms of handling quality.
Among other tests of subsystems
were brake, telemetry, redundancy links, and ensuring the centre of gravity
(CG) of the aircraft is at the correct design place.
The aircraft’s performance
matched the predicted calculations made during preliminary and detailed design
stages.
“The data provided by the
flight tests were sufficient and invaluable for us to feed into fine tuning the
aircraft for auto pilot to allow us to conduct a subsequent test on auto pilot
mode,” says one of the engineering crew on-site.
Why a CTOL test for a VTOL aircraft? The ability to take off and land conventionally is an important part of the safety justification for VTOL aircraft, a key safety contingency.
Samad’s Aircraft Design Adviser, Professor John Fielding explains,
“Safety is key. We have investigated various safety challenges via CFD analysis and now through the flight tests using this 50% scaled CTOL prototype.”
Samad Aerospace is a disruptive green-tech start-up based in the UK. The company’s highly skilled and sought-after team of engineers are pioneering the development of the world’s fastest hybrid-electric vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft set to revolutionise civil air transportation globally. Samad Aerospace is now listed in the top 5 e-VTOL start-ups worldwide[1] and is regarded as an essential and key contributor to the 3rd aerospace revolution[2].
Samad Aerospace has been developing its unique manned and unmanned aircraft with two scaled prototypes (10% and 20%) successfully built, flown, and showcased in reputable international air shows such as Singapore, Geneva and Farnborough.
Preparations for the e-VTOL flight tests are
already well underway. 2021 will see the
completion of the 50% e-VTOL version of the e-Starling.
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Airbus’s new five-bladed H145 helicopter has received FAA type certification (TC) with the first U.S. delivery slated to occur early next year. The TC covers single-pilot instrument flight rules (IFR) and single-engine operations (Cat.A/VTOL), and night vision goggle capability. EASA certified the helicopter in June and launch customer Norwegian Air Ambulance Foundation received the first production model in September.
“The
FAA certification is an important milestone for the H145 program, as our
customers in North America are eagerly awaiting its arrival and our entire team
looks forward to delivering and supporting this new variant,” said Romain
Trapp, president of Airbus Helicopters, Inc. and head of the North America
region. Airbus has begun updates to the current U.S. H145 final assembly line
modification and technician training in Columbus, Mississippi in preparation
for receipt of the first kits of the new version later this year.
SpaceX plans to launch the eighth version of its Starship interplanetary rocket SN8 to about 50,000 feet with an ambitious test schedule that CEO Elon Musk wouldn’t take odds on its success. The silo-like stainless steel cylinder, which looks a little more spaceship-like with its nose cone attached for the first time, is hoped to blast off the pad at Boca Chica, Texas, test a bunch of onboard systems and then flip over for a belly-first descent. It will then fire its engines for a vertical landing on the pad. Maybe.
“Lot of things need to go right, so maybe 1/3 chance,” Musk said in a tweet. “But that’s why we have SN9 and SN10.” Those are the next prototype spacecraft, waiting in line in the production facility so that testing can continue even if the current vehicle is lost. Several of the earlier prototypes have gone out in a blaze of glory in spectacular and destructive fireballs. Each prototype is more complex than the next and SpaceX is gambling that disposable prototypes will be ultimately cheaper than achieving untested perfection on the first try. While the Starship’s top tier mission is to take humans to Mars, the vehicles sophisticated enough for orbital flight will be used as a more efficient way to launch low earth orbit satellites for Musk’s Starlink internet service.
Jeg tar med meg denne fordi X-37B er en av mine favoritter; bare noen få vet hva dens oppgaver er. Et lite hint finner du under. (Red.)
The forgotten fighter plane which won the Battle of Britain
(Image
credit: Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
By Stephen Dowling30th November 2020
Eighty years ago, a small
single-seat fighter was largely responsible for defeating Germany’s attempts to
invade Britain. But it wasn’t the Spitfire.
O
On 7 September 1940, southern England suffered
what was then the biggest air raid the world had ever seen.
Over the previous three months, the aircraft of
Germany’s Luftwaffe had tried to break the resistance of Britain’s Royal Air
Force (RAF). Already severely depleted from the heavy fighting during the
invasion of France, the RAF had buckled several times under the strain. A
particularly brutal offensive against its airfields and the factories producing
its fighter planes over the weeks before had left it dangerously close to
running out of both planes and pilots.
If the attacks had carried on with the same intensity
for a few more weeks, the RAF might have collapsed completely. German invasion
barges were waiting on the other side of the channel for just such a moment.
But then Germans then turned their attention –
mystifyingly – to Britain’s cities, hoping that indiscriminate bombing would
cause widespread panic and force Britain to surrender. The Luftwaffe decided to
throw every available aircraft into the offensive. It started on 7 September.
During the early afternoon, British radar
observers hunched over their screens started seeing something massive taking
shape. From airfields across France, wave after wave of German bombers and
fighters took to the air, forming up into one enormous formation over the
English Channel. It was so large – nearly 1,100 planes – that it covered 800
square miles (2,072 sq km). The last time a force this powerful had threatened
England was the Spanish Armada, 500 years before.
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The aircraft defending London that day were
spearheaded by the Supermarine Spitfire, an iconic single-seat fighter plane which had
only entered service a few months before the start of World War Two. The
Spitfire was fast, sleek and very agile – but it was outnumbered two to one by
another fighter, one often ignored in the popular retelling of the battle. It
was the Hawker Hurricane, and most of the RAF squadrons flying over London
that day were equipped with it.
It was an aircraft that not only helped turn the
tide of a war, but whose legacy can be found today in a wide range of modern
life – from aviation to medicine. This year marks the 85th anniversary of the
Hawker Hurricane’s first flight, and what follows offers some insight into the
impact it has had.
The 7 September raid
marked the first time in history 1,000 aircraft had taken part in an air raid
(two-thirds of them were fighters protecting the bombers). London’s docks and
the working-class neighbourhoods of the East End were devastated. The fires were
so fierce that one of the RAF’s fighter airfields 40 miles away couldn’t
operate because huge palls of drifting smoke made it too dangerous to fly. The
fires – like the ones in the factories of Woolwich, which produced flames
hundreds of feet high – burned long into the night, a beacon for further
night-time attacks. “Black Saturday”, as it became known, marked the start of The
Blitz, an eight-month-long series of night attacks which destroyed vast swathes
of London’s industry and housing, causing unimaginable despair among the
civilians who endured it.
The Hurricane was largely overlooked in favour of the more
graceful-looking Spitfire, seen on the right (Credit: Iwan Lewis/UK Ministry of
Defence/Getty Images)
Several Hurricane pilots lost their lives that
day, among them Richard “Dickie” Reynell, a 6ft 6in Australian who must have
found the Hurricane’s cramped cockpit a tight squeeze indeed. Reynell’s
aircraft was hit by a German fighter in a huge dogfight in the skies over
Greenwich, the historic naval district on the south side of the Thames River.
Local military historian Steve Hunnisett, who has combed through the
declassified records from Reynell’s squadron, says he was most likely wounded
in the aircraft, and had managed to get his canopy open and jump out of his
stricken plane, but blacked out before he could open his parachute.
He fell into the garden of a house in the suburb
of Blackheath, the house of a naval officer who happened to be at home on the
day. According to a declassified casualty report that Hunnisett has been able
to read, "life was extinct and the body was removed to the Royal Herbert
Military Hospital, Woolwich”. Reynell was 28 and left behind a wife and young
son. He is buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey.
Richard Reynell died a minute’s walk from my
house. He was a highly experienced test pilot who had flown Hurricanes for
Hawker, the company which had designed and built it. The RAF had been so short
of pilots that Reynell has been seconded to a fighter squadron during the
summer, partly, Hunnisett says, because Hawker wanted him to “get combat
experience and feedback on modifications that might need to be made”.
His secondment had ended that morning. If he
hadn’t decided to delay his trip back to Hawker until the Monday, he would
probably have been on a train out of London when the Black Saturday raid
lumbered towards the capital.
***
The Hawker Hurricane flew
only a few short years before the Spitfire, but to all intents and purposes it
was from an earlier age. Where the Spitfire was sleek and streamlined, the
Hurricane was stubby and workmanlike. It wasn’t just a case of aesthetics,
either. The Hurricane had as much in common with aircraft built 20 years
earlier than it did with the Spitfire – aviation in the 1930s really did sprint
forward in leaps and bounds.
The Hurricane actually
began life as a biplane, based on an earlier aircraft Hawker had built
The Hurricane was the first monoplane fighter to
enter service with the RAF. Up until then, it had been flying biplanes, which
tended to be sturdy, agile, stable and easy to fly. There was a drawback,
however – speed. The extra drag from two sets of thick wings prevented them
getting much faster than 300mph (480km/h). Engines, however, were getting more
and more powerful, and aircraft designers were already coming up with monoplane
bomber designs that could fly faster than biplane fighters.
The Hurricane actually began life as a biplane,
based on an earlier aircraft Hawker had built. Paul Beaver, an aviation historian and pilot, says: “If you look at the construction of the
original aircraft, it had fabric-covered mainplanes [wings]. Fabric wings are
very easy to repair, but they make it difficult to fly the plane robustly.”
Hawker’s chief designer,
Sidney Camm, changed the wings to ones made of metal, partly to support the
weight of the eight machine guns the Hurricane would carry. But the rest of the
aircraft? Most of it was a wooden frame then enclosed in “stretched Irish
linen”, Beaver says, and then ‘doped’ – covered in a lacquer which stiffened
and tightened it. Compare that to the Spitfire, which was the first all-metal
fighter plane and whose construction and repair demanded far more
sophistication than the humble Hurricane.
During the Battle of Britain, the slower Hurricane was expected to
concentrate on German bombers (Credit: Kirsty Wigglesworth/WPA/Getty Images)
The Hurricane first flew in 1935. “It was a game
changer at the time,” says Hunnisett. “It would have looked like something
completely alien to pilots used to flying biplanes with the cockpit open. It
would have been a quantum jump.”
Only a few months before, pilots would have
climbed into a biplane with an open cockpit – there’s a reason those old movies
show pilots in sheepskin-and-leather jackets and flying helmets, a necessary
barrier to the bone-chilling cold outside the cockpit. Instead, the Hurricane
had an enclosed cockpit with a sliding canopy.
The new fighter plane was
a good 50 or 60mph faster than most of the biplane fighter planes at the time.
In the days before the Spitfire and its all-metal rival, the German Messerschmitt Bf 109, the Hurricane became a new benchmark for fighter
plane design.
The display he gave blew
everyone’s socks off – Steve Hunnisett
Hawker had ambitious export plans for the
aircraft, assuming other countries’ air forces would be as impressed as the
RAF. One famous aerobatic display at the Brussels Air Show in 1939 was
breathlessly reported by aviation magazine Flight. The pilot? Richard Reynell.
"No one who had the good fortune to witness
it is ever likely to forget his performance on the Hurricane at the Brussels
show,” the magazine’s correspondent wrote. “His aerobatic display was one of
the high spots of the day, eliciting gasps then uncontrolled applause from the
spectators. At one moment horror swept through the whole assembly; the
Hurricane was diving vertically with the engine off and when two very large
sheets of flame licked along the fuselage. But [Richard] pulled out and
rocketed past, whipping over into a vertical turn at fantastic speed."
“The display he gave blew
everyone’s socks off,” says Hunnisett. “He showed everyone what it could do. As
a result of the display, the Belgian Air Force put in an order for them.” Also
in the audience that day were high-ranking German officers, including the
Luftwaffe’s chief planner Erhard Milch. German pilots would soon get a much closer
look at the Hurricane.
Some Hurricanes operated from airfields in the north of Russia,
protecting Arctic convoys (Credit: Sovfoto/Getty Images)
After World War 2 broke out, several RAF Hurricane
squadrons were sent to France, where they occasionally encountered German
aircraft during a period of relative calm. It’s here that an unintended
advantage of the Hurricane’s wood-and-fabric construction became apparent.
German fighters were armed with small fast-firing cannon whose shells would
explode when they hit their target. One or two would normally be enough to
fatally damage an aircraft. The Hurricane’s fabric fuselage, however, wasn’t rigid
enough to set the shells off. “The fabric allowed the cannon shells to go right
through,” says Beaver. He says that in one early encounter in 1940, one RAF
pilot returned from a mission with five gaping holes in his fuselage from
German cannon shells; the pilot had had no idea he had been hit.
Not all Hurricane pilots
would be so lucky, however. The RAF doctrine during the Battle of Britain was
for Spitfires to engage German fighters, and let the slower Hurricanes try to
stop the bombers. Though nimble at low altitudes, the Hurricane was more
sluggish at greater heights; German fighter pilots were more aggressively
trained and adept at attacking from behind, flying with the Sun at their back.
It was almost impossible to spot a small fighter in such a position.
Hurricane pilots often had
only a few seconds to get out of the cockpit
A mix of design defects and pilot habits created
one particularly gruesome problem with Hurricanes. At first, the aircraft did
not have armour around the fuel tanks, and nor did the tanks “self-seal” if
they were punctured, something which became standard during World War Two. The
doped fuselage and wooden frame could catch fire quite easily. Fuel would flow
from damaged tanks in the wings to an empty space under the cockpit, but a
bigger problem was the main fuel tank which sat directly in front of the
cockpit. If it was ignited, it shot a jet of super-heated flame straight into
the pilot’s face.
Another factor compounded
this. Some of the more experienced pilots at the start of the Battle of Britain
had originally flown biplane fighters in the 1930s and tended to fly with the
canopy open. Also, early Hurricanes had a problem with carbon monoxide fumes
leaking into the cockpit, so an open canopy meant they could take their oxygen
mask off (it was an incredibly uncomfortable thing to have on your face for the
whole mission). “All they did by having the canopy open was the temperature
would go up to several thousand degrees in about three or four seconds – it was
like turning the cockpit into a blast furnace.” Hurricane pilots often had only
a few seconds to get out of the cockpit or face life-changing injuries, or
worse.
A handful of Hurricanes are still flying today (Credit: Ross Land/Getty
Images)
So many pilots suffered such very similar injuries
– severe burns around the eyes, and on their hands as they tried to shield
their face – that British surgeons came up with a nickname for it: “Hurricane
Burns”. The open canopy, the unarmoured fuel tank in front of the cockpit, the
tendency for Hurricane pilots to fly with an unfastened mask, all combined with
agonising, disfiguring effect.
The severity of these burns cases was a huge
challenge for doctors. A leading reconstructive surgeon, New Zealander
Archibald McIndoe, set up a special surgical unit at East Grinstead in West
Sussex to treat them. McIndoe used experimental techniques – pioneering plastic
surgery – on pilots with severe burns. McIndoe’s groundbreaking programme
revolutionised burns care. He discovered saline water treatment helped burned
skin heal more quickly after noticing shot down pilots who had been rescued
from the English Channel tended to recover quicker than those who went down
over land.
McIndoe became aware some of his patients might
need years of medical treatment, and realised treating the mental effects was
as vital as the physical. The pilots were able to wear normal civilian clothes
or their uniforms while they were recovering and were encouraged to leave the
hospital grounds when they wanted. The people of East Grinstead were asked to
invite the pilots into their homes and ignore their injuries. As a result, East
Grinstead became known as “the town that didn’t stare”. The pilots who went
through McIndoe’s far-sighted approach set up a drinking society called “The Guinea Pig Club” that at its peak had nearly 700 members. The
club held yearly reunions in East Grinstead until 2007, more than six decades
after the end of the war. Some of the club members lived to see their 100th
birthdays.
The Hurricane’s flaws had, in a way, been a necessary
spur for McIndoe’s trailblazing techniques, many of which remain the bedrock
for burns victims’ treatment today.
***
The Battle of Britain
Memorial Flight is famous
for the graceful Spitfire which leads it from the front. But next to it is
always Hawker Hurricanes. The Hurricanes made an outsized contribution to the
battle itself. More than half of the nearly 1,200 German aircraft shot down
were by Hurricanes, but its impact has tended to fade into the background
compared to the more graceful Spitfire. “The Spitfire had mystique about it,”
Beaver says. The Germans would always say they had been shot down by a Spitfire
rather than a Hurricane. It was OK to admit you’d been shot down by a Spitfire,
but not a Hurricane.”
Dozens of Hurricanes
survive as museum pieces, but fewer than 20 of these are currently airworthy
The Battle of Britain prevented Germany from
invading and occupying Great Britain, eventually meaning that Europe could be
liberated. Hurricanes served in the Blitz as night fighters, directed to their
targets by radio operators on the ground and on the pilot’s own keen eyesight.
They helped prevent the vital Mediterranean island of Malta from being invaded.
In the deserts of North Africa they served as ground attack aircraft, being
much better suited to the rough conditions than the more fragile Spitfires.
Early on in the war, there
were not enough aircraft carriers to protect the convoys carrying much needed
food and supplies to the UK, and German long-range planes would shadow the
convoys, either bombing the ships or calling in their position to submarines.
These planes could fly far outside the range of Britain’s fighter airfields. A
short-lived solution – at least until more carriers could be built – was to
fit catapults onto merchant ships. A Sea Hurricane fighter could be launched from
these rocket-fired catapults and shoot down or chase off enemy planes. There
was only one problem – it was a one-way mission, as there was nowhere to land
the aircraft. More than 30 ships were refitted, and several were launched in
combat. Incredibly, despite the challenges of ditching a small plane into
rough, freezing seas, only one Sea Hurricane pilot was killed in combat.
The famous aviation pioneer Amy Johnson served as an ATA pilot (Credit:
Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Hurricanes continued to serve until the end of
World War Two, particularly in Burma – where they were able to take off from
basic airfields cut out of the jungle. Nearly 14,500 were built; fewer than the
Spitfire, but Hurricanes were both faster and cheaper to produce. Beaver is
unequivocal about the plane’s contribution – without it, he says, Britain would
have lost the war.
Dozens of Hurricanes survive as museum pieces, but
fewer than 20 of these are currently airworthy. One of the pilots who regularly
flies them from airfields in southern England – places where Hurricanes once
took off during the Battle of Britain – is Anna Walker.
There are a number of
pilots accredited to flying World War Two planes these days, but Walker stands
out. She started flying with her father in her native Brazil when she was only
six, and was flying gliders herself at the age of 13. For the past 27 years she
has been an aerobatic pilot.
The ATA’s history is
something that’s really close to my heart – Anna Walker
It was after an aerobatic display at an airshow
that she was invited by one of the teams that operates World War Two aircraft
to join their roster of pilots. After learning to fly a 1940s-era American
Mustang, she began flying a Spitfire and then finally a Hurricane in 2009.
Walker was keenly aware of the work of the Air Transport
Auxiliary (ATA),
a pool of pilots who delivered aircraft from factories to airfields. With so
many pilots needed for combat operations, the ATA drafted in any pilot who
could fly a plane. Of the more than 1,300 pilots who flew planes to airfields,
more than 160 were women.
“The ATA’s history is something that’s really
close to my heart,” says Walker. “I’ve been lucky enough to meet quite a few of
them [the female pilots]. I’ve been fortunate enough to go to some of their
reunions. There are only two of the women pilots left in the UK.”
The ATA’s women pilots
included the aviation pioneer Amy Johnson, the first woman to fly solo from London to
Australia. She drowned in the Thames Estuary after parachuting out of a plane
she was delivering for the ATA that had run out of fuel. Joan Hughes was
another – she became the youngest female pilot in the UK when she got her
flying licence at the age of 17. Of special significance to the Hurricane was
Winnifred Crossley Fair: she became the first female pilot in the world to be
accredited as a Hurricane pilot. Walker is still in touch with Nancy Miller
Stratford, an American volunteer ATA pilot who is now 102.
More than 100 women pilots served in the ATA during the war, delivering
thousands of aircraft (Credit: Keystone via Getty Images)
Eighty years later, Walker is the only woman in
the world who still flies them. Her own research into the ATA suggests the last
woman to fly a Hurricane was a South African ATA pilot who delivered Hurricanes
for scrapping on her way back home after the end of World War Two. “It was
quicker than waiting for a steamship to take her back home,” Walker says. “So,
I think that makes me the first woman to fly one since the last of those ferry
pilots.”
To those interested in
aircraft, Walker has an enviable job – apart from her aerobatic displays, she
flies pleasure flights in two-seat versions of the Spitfire and the Hurricane.
“I love the Hurricane,” she says. “Most of the pilots who fly the Spitfires
think the Hurricane is a bit of a dog, but I love it.
They’re doing it for
completely different reasons than those flying in the Spitfire. They know what
the Hurricane did – Anna Walker
“It’s not the most beautiful aeroplane. I have to
choose my words carefully when I describe the Hurricane. But I’m not a great
believer in beauty for beauty’s sake. The Hurricane really was just a complete
workhorse. It was an aircraft that just evolved. When you fly it, it really
does fly like a biplane – just a biplane with one of the wings missing. It
really does fly like a 1930s aircraft. All you have to do is look at it from
the front, at the thickness of the wing, and you know it’s not going to be
super-fast.”
Walker also flies passengers in a two-seat
Hurricane, as well as a Spitfire. The people who opt for a flight in a Hurricane,
she says, have often done their research about the aircraft’s role. “They’re
doing it for completely different reasons than those flying in the Spitfire.
They know what the Hurricane did.”
While her pleasure flights have been somewhat
curtailed this year by the coronavirus pandemic, Walker has still got to have
some fun in this under-rated aircraft.
As Britain entered its second lockdown thanks to
the virus, Walker had to return the two-seat Hurricane back to Hawker
Restoration in Suffolk, the company that had resorted it. “We were already in
lockdown so I couldn’t take anyone in the back seat, not even one of the
engineers,” she says. “But it did mean that once I got out into controlled
airspace, I could really throw it around to my heart’s
content.”
