EP35 – Boeing vs GAO, Eviation Partners on Composites; Eurocopter X3 Breaks Helicopter Speed Record; Beta Technologies First Flight
In this episode of the Struck Aerospace Engineering Podcast, we discuss how the GAO is talking with Boeing about their aging workforce - half of Boeing FAA delegates will be of retirement age in just 5 years, which is worrisome. The Eurocopter X3 broke the speed record for a helicopter, and is an impressive machine. We discuss the Beta Technologies EVTOL making an important flight, Eviation getting a new partner on composite doors plus much more on this episode. Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Transcript: EP35 - Boeing vs GAO, Eviation Partners on Composites; Eurocopter X3 Breaks Helicopter Speed Record This episode is brought to you by Weather Guard Lightening Tech. At Weather Guard, we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy. You are listening to the struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. I'm Allen Hall. And here on struck, we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightening protection. All right. Welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast on today's episode. In our new segment, we're gonna talk about easy jet. There was a lightning strike that caused that flight to be diverted kind of scary, but everyone was okay. Secondly, we're talking about the FAA did GAO here in the U S has talked about that. A lot of, uh, engineers are going to be hitting retirement age pretty soon, and there's some key training and competency gaps that need to be addressed. It's a really interesting topic right there. Uh, we're going to chat a little bit about Boeing and some of their UV technology and other technologies they've developed to help clean airplanes. Obviously COVID is still affecting a lot of the way we travel. And speaking of the way COVID is affecting travel. Australia has some new protocols potentially, uh, in place soon that will keep, uh, honestly passengers pretty happy, but also make screening a lot easier and safer potentially in our engineering segment. We're going to talk about the, uh, the Eurocopter X3, which has set a new speed record for a helicopter and also the supersonic business jet that just went through wind tunnel testing. And then lastly, in our EVTOL segment, we're going to talk about Eviation, uh, getting a partner for composite doors and lastly, the Beta Technologies EVTOL and a flight test they recently completed. So Allen let's talk first with some lightning news, easy jet. They think they got struck by lightning. But take us through that scenario. What happened? Well, there's, there's, there's a lot happening in this particular one. So it's flying from, uh, essentially Scotland down to Southern England. And there was a lightning strike on the communication tower down and in Bristol. And what happens in a lot of cases, this is not a normal, but when lightning strikes the airport, you can lose airport lighting, which is a big deal, or you can lose communication tower. And when you lose communication to the aircraft that are coming in to the airport, uh, you. You lose control of traffic. So you, you probably will end up diverting somewhere, which is what happened. They ended up diverting to Birmingham and then being bust the bus down at night time to where they needed to go. So a lot of the airports though have lightning protection because this is not infrequent and a lot of the gear. Uh, communications gear and, uh, anything that may be susceptible to lightning strike has protection in it. So it makes you think something happened, uh, loss of power loss piece of damaged equipment, which just makes for a fun flight because you're not expecting that to happen. If you know, usually aircraft gets struck not, not the airport, but the airport gets struck in this case. It made it for a little bit of an adventure. So bigger story here.