The Anonymous Widower

Heart Aerospace Unveils New Airplane Design, Confirms Air Canada And Saab As New Shareholders

The title of this post, is the same as that of this press release from Heart Aerospace.

These are the first two paragraphs of the press release.

Swedish electric airplane maker Heart Aerospace today unveiled significant design updates to its first electric aircraft and confirmed Air Canada, one of North America’s largest airlines and Saab, the Swedish aerospace and defense company, as new minority shareholders.

The new airplane design, called the ES-30, is a regional electric airplane with a capacity of 30 passengers and it replaces the company’s earlier 19-seat design, the ES-19. It is driven by electric motors powered by batteries, which allows the airplane to operate with zero emissions and low noise.

And this is a visualisation of the aircraft from Heart Aerospace..

It looks fairly normal, except that it has four electric engines instead of two turboprops.

This paragraph of the press release gives details of the engine configuration.

The airplane will also include a reserve-hybrid configuration, consisting of two turbo generators powered by sustainable aviation fuel. The reserve-hybrid system is installed to secure reserve energy requirements without cannibalizing battery range, and it can also be used during cruise on longer flights to complement the electrical power provided by the batteries.

Note.

  1. The slightly larger Dash 8-100 aircraft seats just under forty and has 2.7 MW of installed power.
  2. Rolls-Royce have a 2.5 MW hybrid turbo generator that runs on sustainable aviation fuel.
  3. Honeywell have a similar smaller hybrid turbo generator, based on the auxiliary power unit of an Airbus A 350.

I’m sure that Heart can find the hybrid turbo-generators they need for the ES-30.

This paragraph of the press release gives details of the performance.

This gives the airplane a fully electric range of 200 kilometers, an extended range of 400 kilometers with 30 passengers, and flexibility to fly up to 800 kilometers with 25 passengers, all-inclusive of typical airline reserves.

Eight hundred kilometres is sufficient range to serve Bordeaux, Frankfurt, Geneva, Hamburg, Inverness, Paris and Shannon airports from London City Airport.

The press release also discloses that the company has received 96 letters of intent for the aircraft and expects that the in-service date will be 2028.

I don’t think that the date is unreasonable.

 

September 17, 2022 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Queen’s First Computer System For Her Horses

In The Queen Was Well-Briefed, I mentioned a lunch with a Hewlett-Packard engineer and that he had done some work in Buckingham Palace.

This article on NBC is entitled When Did Queen Elizabeth II Last Visit San Francisco And The Bay Area?, where this is the first paragraph.

Queen Elizabeth’s visit to the Bay Area included a serenade by Tony Bennett, a meal at Trader Vics in Emeryville and a dinner at the De Young Museum with President Ronald Reagan and the First Lady.

The visit was in 1983 and these two paragraphs describes her visit to Silicon Valley.

On March 3, 1983, the Queen visited Stanford University and the Hewlett Packard factory, the technology company based in Palo Alto.

At Stanford Queen Elizabeth dined at the Hoover House with university president Donald Kennedy.

Hewlett-Packard presented the Queen a HP 3000 computer on which to plan and organise the breeding of her race horses, to mark her visit to the company.

I should say, that the engineer, who I’ll call Bob, was well-known to me, as he’d been the engineer, who’d serviced my HP 21MX computer, when I was programming Artemis in the 1970s. He was very good at his job, but hadn’t expected his job to take this direction.

Hewlett-Packard had behaved very professionally and had obtained a licence for suitable software from the Aga Khan.

The installation of the computer in the basement of Buckingham Palace had gone well, with the user terminal being placed in the Queen’s apartment.

When everything was working, the Queen’s equerry, with whom he was dealing, announced they would be going to France to get the software from the Aga Khan’s stud at a chateau to the West of Paris.

The equerry arranged with the engineer to meet him at the VIP suite in the Queen’s Building at Heathrow in a few days time. He was also told he’d be staying one night in France.

So at the appointed time, he gingerly opened the door to the VIP suite and walked in. Almost immediately he bumped into Mrs. Thatcher, who was leaving. Luckily, he was spotted by the equerry, who beckoned him over.

He asked the equerry about the flight and was told that they would be flying in a Dominie of the Queen’s Flight to Beauvais.

I can remember him saying that that was the way to fly.

They were met by a limousine on arrival in France and taken to the chateau.

He was then shown to his room, which he described as an extravagant tart’s boudoir.

After a period of time, the equerry knocked on his door and announced the plan for the visit.

They would have dinner in half-an-hour with the Aga Khan and then in the morning his software guy would show you about the software and hand over a copy.

The engineer did admit to being a bit out of his depth, but the equerry just told him to copy him and he’d be alright.

Thirty minutes later the equerry collected the engineer and they were shown into a room, where the meeting would take place.

There was a curtain across the room, and as it drew back, all the flunkies prostrated themselves on the ground. The engineer was watching the equerry, who just stood there. So he copied him.

When the curtain finally revealed the Aga Khan, the engineer felt it best to just stand there.

However, the Aga Khan approached him and said. “Hello! You must be Bob!”

The rest of the visit went without incident and the software was duly collected.

 

September 10, 2022 Posted by | Computing, Sport, Transport/Travel | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

France Passes A Law That Prohibits Domestic Flights, For Trips That Can Be Made By Train In Less Than Two And A Half Hours

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Asapland.

I actually wonder, if this is something that is almost a complete ban on domestic flights except to islands like Corsica, as with the growth of the TGV network there can’t be many pairs of places in France, where the train takes more than two and a half hours.

I need to go to Pau at some time in the near future.

Pau is actually four and a half hours from Paris. Would most people take the train?

Other distances for comparison include.

  • Biarritz – 4 hours 11 minutes
  • Bordeaux – 2 hours 11 minutes
  • Marseilles – 3 hours 2 minutes
  • Nice – 6 hours
  • Strasbourg – 2 hours

It just shows how big France is.

By comparison in the UK, you can get to the following places in two and a half hours from London.

  • Preston from Euston
  • Hull from Kings Cross
  • Leeds from Kings Cross
  • Northallerton from Kings Cross
  • Exeter St. Davids from Paddington
  • Port Talbot Parkway from Paddington

Other roughly two and a half hour journeys would include.

  • Edinburgh and York
  • Glasgow and Preston
  • Aberdeen and Edinburgh

I would think, that the French have got the limit in their law about right.

Should We Have A Similar Law In The UK?

I have once taken a flight on a scheduled airline in the UK, shorter than London and Edinburgh. That was between London and Newcastle in the 1970s in a Dan-Air Comet 4.

In the last fifty years, four flights to Edinburgh and one to Aberdeen and Belfast, are probably all the domestic flying I’ve done in the UK.

I suspect, it is unlikely, that I will be affected if a similar law to France, were to be enacted in the UK.

There is also an interesting development in the provision of long distance rail services in the UK.

  • East Coast Trains are bringing in a fast, no-frills, one price service on the London and Edinburgh route.
  • Other companies are looking to do the same from London to Blackpool, Cardiff and Stirling.

I feel, that we’ll see some interesting services introduced by rail and ferry companies to compete with airlines.

London Euston And Dublin By Low Carbon Boat Train

Currently, you can get to Dublin from London by train to Holyhead and then a ferry.

  • The non-stop train between London Euston and Holyhead takes just over three and a half hours.
  • Avanti West Coast will be replacing their trains with new faster Class 805 bi-mode trains, which in a few years could be capable of running at up to 140 mph between London Euston and Crewe.
  • Irish Ferries have a fast ferry that goes between Holyhead and Dublin in one hour and forty-nine minutes.

I can see a fast train and ferry service between London Euston and Dublin getting very close to five hours.

It could be quite likely that new technology, faster trains and targeted marketing will reduce the number of internal flights in the UK.

The same forces will probably do the same in several countries, including France.

So do we really need a law?

April 14, 2021 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Return Of The Triplane Would Make The Red Baron Proud

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Popular Mechanics.

Triplane and Red Baron are words that go together strawberries and cream. Or in my case strawberries and yoghurt!

The magazine seems to like the aircraft.

March 24, 2021 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , | Leave a comment

Will A British Bioelectric Hybrid Plane Really Take Off?

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Guardian.

The article is a serious look from a serious newspaper at the Faradair BEHA.

  • It will have a capacity of 18 passengers.
  • It will have a cruising speed of 230 mph
  • It will have a service ceiling of 14,000 feet.

The aircraft is a tri-plane based on a lightweight carbon-composite structure like many current Airbus designs and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

This image is copyright Faradair.

Note.

  1. The triple wing with the winglets.
  2. The conventional fuselage.
  3. The pusher fans at the rear of the fuselage.

It is not conventional.

Power

Power comes from a hybrid power unit consisting of a battery and the auxiliary power unit (APU) of an Airbus A 350 XWB. I wrote about the hybrid power unit in Honeywell Introduces Power Source For Hybrid-Electric Aircraft.

The power unit will run on sustainable aviation fuel produced from something like food, household or industrial waste.

As an experienced pilot and an experienced engineer and taking a few clues from the Guardian article, I believe the aircraft will fly a unique, but very sensible flight profile.

Many years ago, I wanted to fly my Cessna 340 A from Southend Airport to Naples Airport.

  • I loaded as much fuel, as the tanks would take.
  • I taxied to the runway,
  • A fuel bowser followed me down and added extra fuel to make up what I’d used in taxiing.
  • Take-off was on full power and I climbed at maximum rate to as high as I was allowed.
  • Once over France, I climbed to Flight Level 195 (19,500 ft), which was the highest level allowed in a light aircraft in full visibility without a full instrument rating.
  • The French Air Traffic Control handed me over to Italian Air Traffic Control at the same height.
  • I flew down the West coast of Italy at around 200 mph.
  • North of Naples, I descended slowly, trading height for speed and turned to come straight in to Naples airport.

Note.

  1. It had taken me six hours and forty minutes to fly around 1350 miles.
  2. What I had done in UK and French airspace was totally legal, but I suspect I broke the law in Italy.
  3. But the French ATC felt I was competent, so they just handed me over.

Sadly, I didn’t have a camera with me, as the views of Rome and the Italian coast were spectacular.

I believe that the Faradair BEHA will use a similar flight profile to that, which I used between Southend and Naples.

  • The plane will leave the terminal or apron with a full battery.
  • Before take-off, the hybrid power unit will make sure that the battery is full.
  • Take-off will be on full power and the lift of three wings will be used to lift off quickly and climb at maximum rate to the service ceiling of 14,000 feet.
  • The aircraft will build up speed to 230 mph using power in the battery or some extra power from the hybrid power unit.
  • The aircraft would execute a low power approach at the destination.

Note.

  1. Unlike in my flight to Naples, an autopilot will probably fly the aircraft to the maximum range profile.
  2. The plane will be very aerodynamically efficient and I suspect fuel consumption will be very low in the cruise.
  3. The higher you go, the less the air resistance.
  4. Fuel consumption would be almost nothing in the descent, as just as I did in my Cessna potential energy would be converted into kinetic energy to keep the plane at the necessary flying speed.

Faradair have not disclosed the range, but I feel with development, it could be a thousand miles.

Conclusion

By 2030, many of us will be flying around a thousand miles in weird looking airliners with up to twenty-five seats.

The 317 miles between Stansted and Edinburgh will be a piece of cake!

Everybody should read the excellent Guardian article.

 

 

March 19, 2021 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

British Airways Invests In LanzaJet; SAF Offtake Agreement

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Green Car Congress.

This is the first paragraph.

British Airways will power future flights with sustainable aviation fuel produced from sustainably-sourced ethanol, as part of a new partnership with sustainable jet fuel company LanzaJet. British Airways will invest in LanzaJet’s first commercial-scale Freedom Pines Fuels facility in Georgia and acquire cleaner burning sustainable aviation fuel from the plant.

Other points from the article.

  • Flights using the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) could start in 2022.
  • LanzaJet have their own process that can use inputs like wheat straw and recycled pollution.
  • This agreement would be in addition to BA’s partnership with Velocys in the Altalto plant at Immingham.
  • British Airways also appear to have set themselves a target of being carbon net-zero by 2050.

The article is certainly on any list of must-reads.

February 14, 2021 Posted by | Energy, Transport/Travel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Boeing 737 Max Cleared To Fly In Europe After Crashes

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.

The aircraft may be cleared to fly, but will passengers want to fly in it?

I certainly won’t be flying on any airline, that has any of these aircraft in their fleet.

But then I prefer train travel.

January 27, 2021 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | 1 Comment

Is This The New Look For Eviation’s Alice?

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Flight Global.

Eviation Alice certainly looks different in their picture.

It (or is it she?) is shown with a T-tail, two engines and a different undercarriage.

The article says the aircraft could fly this year, and be certified in 2023.

January 21, 2021 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , | Leave a comment

Greener Planes Of The Future… Or Just Pretty Plans?

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.

  • It is a good survey of the way things will have to go for zero carbon aviation.
  • It shows designs from both Airbus and Boeing, with some more radical designs as well.

These are a few of my thoughts.

  • I think that we shan’t be seeing a too-radical design in the next decade, as it just wouldn’t fit the current airports.
  • But I can certainly envisage, aircraft running on liquid hydrogen.
  • There will be some outstanding aerodynamics.
  • Long-haul aircraft might just be upgraded current designs running on aviation biofuel.

I am certainly looking forward to taking a zero-carbon flight before 2030.

January 8, 2021 Posted by | Transport/Travel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Today’s Rubbish, Tomorrow’s Jet Fuel

The title of this post, is the same as that of this feature article on Professional Engineering.

This is the opening paragraph.

One day, in the very near future, commercial aircraft will be fuelled by household rubbish. Yes, seriously.

It then goes on to describe the Velocys process for producing sustainable aviation fuel from household rubbish.

This paragraph explains, how it will change rubbish disposal.

Interestingly, Velocys won’t have to pay to obtain the waste. “We don’t buy it. We get paid to take it,” says Hargreaves. He explains how the supply chain starts with councils and businesses that are obliged to pay waste contractors to dispose of their waste. Those waste contractors then pay to incinerate the waste or send it to landfill sites. Velocys’s plant will simply act as an alternative disposal route.

The article is a very good explanation of one of the developments, that will shape the future of the world.

 

December 18, 2020 Posted by | Energy, Transport/Travel | , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

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