Open up your mind and say, ahh...

Photo: Sonex

A pair of new single-seat airplanes promise a lot of performance for the dollar, offering speeds topping 150 mph for less than $30,000 with engine.

There is, however, some assembly required.

The two single-seater, kit-built planes are aimed squarely at DIY pilots looking for the biggest bang for the buck.

The Onex from Sonex, based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, is the latest in a long line of inexpensive kit planes offering relatively high performance. The aluminum airplane is capable of aerobatics and manages a 155 mph cruise speed on just 80 horsepower.

An interesting, and attractive, design feature is the foldable wings. They can be folded in minutes and the sporty airplane loaded onto a trailer. The ability to keep your plane at home eliminates parking or hangar costs at the airport and makes maintenance (or long stares of admiration) much easier.

After the first flight a year ago, Sonex recently announced the Federal Aviation Administration has approved the company’s building checklists for the Onex. This gives current and future builders the green light to complete their aircraft in accordance to FAA rules. More than 50 Onex kits have already been shipped to builders.

The second of the new single-seaters got smooth composite lines from the hands of a surfboard maker.

Photo: Aerochia

The Aerochia LT-1 has been in development a few years. The carbon-fiber composite fuselage looks like it might hide a tiny radial engine, but the LT-1 is powered by a two-cylinder, four-stroke HKS engine producing just 60 horsepower. Aerochia expects to get speeds as great as 160 mph from the engine, according to the Experimental Aviation Association.

The LT-1 was designed by a surfboard maker who worked with multi-time Reno air racing champion Darryl Greenamyer on some of the pilot’s most recent composite airplanes. They expect the plane, which has a 21-foot wingspan, to have a maximum weight of less than 800 pounds and burn just three gallons per hour at cruise speed.

The airplane is still in flight testing mode, but the company expects to have the LT-1 at Airventure in Oshkosh, Wisconsin this summer.

Kim Dotcom is a hard man to reach. The founder of Megaupload.com, the popular file-sharing site the Federal prosecutors just shut down, has been accused of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated content uploaded to his service–movies, music, TV shows, and so forth. But the chief innovation officer, who oversees more than 30 employees in nine countries, has made a business of testing the legal limits–his umbrella company has pulled in roughly $175 million, according to court filings, of which he received more than $42 million in 2010.

Inquiries to Megaupload over the past year have not been responded to; when I reached out to a source this week who had a connection to Dotcom, the source responded, “Sorry, but Kim told us explicitly not to put him in contact with journalists.” But Dotcom hasn’t been able to evade the Feds: Prosecutors have indicted him and six other defendants over online piracy, and are seeking the forfeiture of $175 million, dozens of bank accounts around the globe, as well as a stable of Mercedes-Benzes, Maseratis, Rolls-Royces, and Lamborghinis boasting vanity license plates that likely reflect the Dotcom era of Megaupload: “Good,” “Evil,” “CEO,” “God,” “Stoned,” “Mafia,” “Hacker,” and perhaps most telling, “Guilty.”

According to court documents, Dotcom owns roughly 68% Megaupload.com, Megaclick.com, and Megapix.com, subsidiary sites of the Mega Conspiracy brand. Dotcom also owns 100% of registered companies Megavideo.com, Megaporn.com, and Megapay.com. This family of sites grew to include more than 180 million registered users. Premium members of the service helped bring Mega Conspiracy more than $150 million, according to the Feds, while online advertising help the company bring in another $25 million.

To give some sense of just how large Dotcom’s dot-com business grew, between roughly 2006 through 2011, Mega Conspiracy’s PayPal account is said to have received over $110 million from subscribers and other associated persons. Fees for accepting payments on PayPal range from about 2% to as high as 3.9% for international transactions; thus, even a low-ball estimate would suggest PayPal likely made millions of dollars from Dotcom’s operations.

Any pilot familiar with Van’s Aircraft probably could have guessed that when the company decided to build a light sport aircraft, it would deliver a lot of smiles for not much money. The kitplane company has for 40 years offered a long line of airplanes that offer impressive all-around performance on a relatively small budget. But there’s always been a catch.

You have to build the airplane yourself.

Van’s latest design is the RV-12, a two-seater with a 100-horsepower engine. It was designed to fit the Federal Aviation Administration’s light sport aircraft category, which limits aircraft to two seats, less than 1,320 pounds, a top speed of less than 120 knots (138 mph) indicated airspeed and fixed landing gear. Specifically the RV-12 is an E-LSA, where the “E” means experimental because it is an amateur or homebuilt aircraft.

The RV-12 has proven quite popular since its introduction a few years ago, with more than 150 flying already. It’s easy to see why. A complete kit costs less than $64,000 and includes everything you need to go flying except for gas, oil and about 800 hours of your time.

We recently paid a visit to the Van’s Aircraft factory in Aurora, Ore., and took an RV-12 demonstrator up for a flight. Ken Scott, Van’s technical-support guru and demo pilot, joined me. He’s built an RV-12 and hardly contains his excitement about the relatively simple airplane’s performance.

“My lawn tractor is way more complicated than my airplane,” he says, noting that his RV-12 lacks a suspension, steering mechanism or grass cutter. “And yesterday I was doing 126 knots straight and level on 100 horsepower!”

Yes, that’s a handle on the wingtip. The RV-12 features removable wings to make storing the plane much easier.

The RV-12 is a simple aircraft, essentially an aluminum frame with a few moving parts and an engine. And despite the experimental moniker, an E-LSA is not an experiment, but a safe and proven airplane approved by the FAA.

It should be noted that Scott was referring to the airplane’s true airspeed, while the 120 knot limit governing light sport aircraft refers to indicated airspeed. Indicated airspeed is what the airplane “feels” as the air hits the airframe. True airspeed corrects for altitude and temperature allowing the pilot to know how fast an airplane is moving over the ground, assuming no wind. At 10,000 feet and an air temperature of 65 degrees, the indicated airspeed may only be 100 knots, while the true airspeed would be 130.

Scott says he can climb at 1,400 feet per minute in his plane. This is impressive performance that makes reaching higher altitudes practical to chase higher true airspeeds.

We were flying somewhere over the Willamette Valley near the factory when it hit me. The RV-12 exceeds the kind of performance many pilots are familiar with flying stalwarts like the Cessna 172 or a Piper Cherokee. And while it’s true that, for most pilots, just about any airplane is fun to fly, the RV-12′s light and well-balanced controls elicit a smile far more easily than those classic aircraft.

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Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are developing a tool to mine aircraft black boxes for valuable data after every flight, something they say will improve daily operations and prevent accidents.

An airplane’s black box, or flight data recorder, continuously records performance data and other information during flight. That data has long been used to reconstruct the events that occurred before an accident to understand what happened. But the researchers believe that data can be used proactively, and daily.

Retrieving and analyzing data from a flight data recorder after a typical flight is not new. Airlines often check a quick access recorder that operates in parallel with the flight data recorder, examining certain parameters to improve operations and safety. But current tools are limited to looking for known issues, and the amount of data can be staggering. MIT professor John Hansman says the key is developing analysis tools that can effectively utilize all the information.

“It’s a classic data mining problem,” he says. “You may be getting 300 parameters, 30 times a second, flying 7,000 flights a day.”

Commercial airlines in the United States are not required to implement a flight data monitoring program. But the Federal Aviation Administration has a flight operations quality assurance program that includes guidelines airlines can follow on a voluntary basis.

Airlines typically monitor known parameters that have helped identify issues in the past. Things like engine thrust and aircraft speeds, as well as flight control positions such as elevator and rudder inputs, are among the things studied at the end of a day’s flying or when flight data is analyzed after a crash.

It works well enough, Hansman says, but it focuses on flagging known parameters and measuring them against known baselines. That makes it difficult to know what you don’t know but should be looking for. Hansman and his team developed software that uses cluster analysis to to spot potential problems without knowing in advance what parameters to monitor.

“We’re trying to flag problems we don’t know about,” he says, “and we don’t know what the baseline is.”

The cluster analysis tool can create its own baseline for reference.

“You don’t need to know ahead of time what the problem is,” Hansman says. “It finds the normal behavior in the clusters.”

Using flight data from a defunct airline that flew Boeing 777s, the team collected data from 365 flights. They found several cases where the cluster analysis software identified problems. With each parameter represented by a vector, they were then mapped in a multiple-dimension “hyperspace” where outliers could be seen outside the data clusters that represent a normal flight.

Once identified, the outliers can be investigated further to determine what, if any, impact they might have. In some cases, they are nothing to worry about, but in others they may flag a potential issue that could improve safety and operations.

Hansman hopes to further develop the cluster analysis software with larger data sets from more airlines in the future.

EVERETT, Washington — The flight testing is done, the Federal Aviation Administration has issued its approval and as of today Boeing can say the 787 Dreamliner is certified to carry passengers.

The FAA presented Boeing with a type certificate and production certificate for the innovative composite airliner during a grand ceremony at Boeing’s factory north of Seattle. The pieces of paper mean the Dreamliner can begin commercial service, and they represent the culmination of several billion dollars of investment for the aerospace giant and almost as many headaches.

Boeing attempted a grand experiment with the Dreamliner, one that proved far more difficult to execute than anyone imagined. The 787 project took more than three years longer than expected, and the delays cost Boeing untold amounts of money in lost sales. Still, the company has orders for more than 800 Dreamliners and hopes customers will find the airplane was worth waiting for.

“This is going to be an airplane that changes the game,” CEO Jim Albaugh told the crowd gathered around the first 787, airplane ZA001. “Once our customers get this airplane, I think they’ll forgive us for the fact that it was a little bit late.”

The hard work is only beginning, and more headaches may be ahead. Boeing has shown the composite airplane works as promised. Now it has to prove it can build Dreamliners quickly and efficiently and see a profitable return on its investment.

“This doesn’t magically open up the flood gates and release a torrent of cash,” says Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst with Teal Group. “If anything, the financial part could get worse as they try to ramp up production. It’s going to be a very difficult 18 months.”

Boeing 787s await finishing and delivery to customers at the company’s Paine Field facility. The modified 747 known as the Dreamlifter is at right.

The flight testing of the 787 program has gone fairly well since the Dreamliner’s first flight in December, 2009.

There have been a few hiccups, including an in-flight fire and quite a few delays, but Boeing has shown the 787 will perform as claimed. This was key to securing sales, because Boeing claims the 787 is about 20 percent more fuel efficient than similar aircraft and will therefore save airlines a lot of money.

The fuel efficiency comes thanks to new engines from Rolls Royce and GE, along with improved aerodynamics, primarily in the wing. The engines with their serrated cowlings are also dramatically quieter than existing airliners. In fact, they’re so quiet that during testing, many have commented it sounds like the engines are shut down entirely.

The composite fuselage should make passengers more comfortable. It allows for bigger windows, as well as a lower cabin altitude and higher humidity.

But building the 787 has been anything but smooth. Parts shortages, design defects (including a problem with how the wing joined the fuselage) and a global supply chain caused several delays.

Boeing took a huge risk when it decided not only to design and build an entirely new airplane, but to come up with a new way to design and build that airplane. In an unusual move, the company outsourced the design and construction of major components to firms in countries around the world. Many point to that as the cause of many delays, which ultimately made the plane three years late.

But Aboulafia says the real problem was Boeing let outside firms do too much design work.

“Outsource production,” he says. “Don’t outsource design.”

All the 787s completed so far have been assembled from complete subsystems on an assembly line in Everett, Washington, alongside the 747, 767 and 777 lines. The company also opened a second 787 assembly line in South Carolina where airframe number 46 is currently being put together.

But unlike other Boeing models, in which much of the manufacturing occurs in Everett, the 787 is assembled from subassemblies manufactured in several countries and flown to Washington in modified 747s.

A short list of the parts built outside Everett include fuselage sections made in Italy, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Floor beams are built in India. Wing sections come from Japan. The doors and landing gear are made in France and Sweden. Portions of the tail are made in Italy and South Korea.

In addition to distributing some of the cost and risk, the global supply chain was also a way to make friends in countries where Boeing wanted to sell the 787.

A model of a Boeing 787, presented to FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt, stands in front of ZA001, the first 787 ever built.

The process hasn’t gone smoothly, and the challenge now is build airplanes fast enough to keep customers happy. Boeing has orders for more than 800 Dreamliners, and will have to build them quickly and efficiently enough to start making money. List price for the current 787 is $185.2 million. But it is widely understood that airlines receive various discounts on orders.

“Boeing has to start building this plane for the price they charge,” Aboulafia says, and “it might take the majority of the decade” for Boeing to accomplish that.

When FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt handed Albaugh the type certificate, the 787 chief project engineer Mike Sinnett held it over his head like a coach hoisting the Super Bowl trophy (below).

The type certificate from the FAA means the airplane has been tested and meets all of the federal requirements for a passenger carrying aircraft. The agency has approved the airplane as a certified airplane suitable for its intended use. But as Babbitt noted, the production certificate is no less important, because it means Boeing can actually produce and sell the 787 as well.

The eighth airplane off the assembly line will be delivered to All Nippon Airways on September 26 and is expected to enter passenger service in Japan weeks later.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt hands Boeing’s Mike Sinnett the type certificate and production certificate certifying the 787 Dreamliner to begin commercial service.

Photos: Jason Paur/Wired. Lead photo: The second 787 off the assembly line performs a flyby during a celebration today in Everett, Wash., where the FAA issued final approval for the aircraft. The first 787 ever built is in the foreground.

Boeing announced today it has completed flight testing the Rolls-Royce powered 787 Dreamliner for type certification with the Federal Aviation Administration. The final flight took place Saturday and was a relatively simple simulation of a flight dispatch with a failed generator and failed fuel flow indicator.

The 90 minute flight from Billings, Montana back to the factory at Paine Field north of Seattle was the end of a flight test program that started on December 15, 2009. Seven flight test aircraft have completed more than 1,700 flights totaling more than 4,800 flight hours.

Flight testing with the General Electric powered 787 will continue and is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Saturday’s final flight test should mean the airplane will be issued a type certificate in the next few weeks and launch customer All Nippon Airways will begin service some time next month.

It’s probably no coincidence that a video was released on Saturday (after the jump) showing the 787 buzzing a familiar tower and performing a host of impressive maneuvers while evading an Airbus A380 (h/t FlightBlogger).

Photo: Boeing, Video: 3-D Aviation

This design concept might be more sight gag than real product, but it’s clever nonetheless. Bringing new meaning to the phase “you snooze, you lose,” when you place this unforgiving clock across the room from your bed, if you don’t get up when the alarm sounds, it’s going to cost you.

Might we suggest at first being easy on yourself, placing a lower-denomination bill into this sleeper’s trap before you start punishing yourself too much. From the looks of these pics, that shredder does a thorough job of destroying currency or whatever else you’d like to place in it. And look at that — the designer has placed not one, but what looks like a stack of $100 bills into the clock’s hungry maw.

Careful, though — in the U.S., willfully destroying U.S. currency is a federal crime:

“..Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.”

Adding a bit of jail time to the penalty of losing your $100 (and perhaps paying another $100 fine) might just make you get out of bed in the morning, sleepyhead.

Via AcidCow

Buses are a natural for electrification. They follow fixed routes, they’re stored in centralized locations and they benefit from loads of torque. Trouble is, batteries are really big and really expensive, especially when you’re talking about something capable of powering a bus.

GE Global Research thinks it has an answer to that problem.

The company’s hybrid systems research team has built a system that combines a high-energy density sodium battery with a high-power lithium-ion battery. It’s betting the technology accelerates the electrification of buses, delivery trucks and other large heavy-duty fleet vehicles.

Why? Because the combination of high-energy and high-power storage capacity could achieve optimal range and performance requirements for large vehicles in a battery of reasonable size and price.

“Public transit and delivery service providers recognize the importance and benefits of transitioning to an electric fleet but are looking for cost-effective solutions to make that possible,” Lembit Salasoo, an electrical engineer leading the project, said in a statement. “With the cost of the battery remaining a principal hurdle, a dual battery system could bring these costs down and help accelerate the electric revolution for bus and delivery truck fleets representing hundreds of thousands of vehicles.”

According to GE, there are 843,000 buses registered in the United States. Many of them — including most of the 63,000 transit buses and 480,000 school buses — travel less than 100 miles daily. That is well within the range of current battery technology.

But most battery chemistries require a compromise between power and energy storage. Lithium ion batteries provide lots of power for optimal acceleration at the expense of storage capacity — aka range. Sodium batteries can store lots of energy but aren’t optimized for power. GE says combining the two provides a good mix of both attributes.

“The beauty of our dual battery system is that it can be scaled to deliver just the right combination of power and storage,” Salasoo said.

GE says the dual-battery system can reduce the cost of a pack by 20 percent compared to using a single chemistry in a vehicle that requires a lot of power and energy storage capacity — like a bus. By combining chemistries, batteries can be optimized to suit specific purposes without having to increase the size, and therefore cost, of the pack.

The research is being done under a $13 million project involving GE, the Federal Transit Administration and Northeast Advanced Vehicle Consortium funded under the National Fuel Cell Bus Program.

Main photo: julien / Flickr. Video: GE

A short clip of the bus in action. You’ll want to turn down your volume.

Is Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood frustrated by “a few erroneous news stories” overstating the government’s reach when it comes to replacing worn-out road signs?

All signs point to yes.

The social-networking-savvy secretary took to Twitter to better explain the impact of updates to the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the standards for street signs, road markings and traffic control devices that have been dictated by the Federal Highway Administration since Nixon was president. “FYI, what the news forgot to tell you: most existing street signs can remain in place,” LaHood tweeted.

Revisions to MUTCD — which LaHood quickly noted were implemented under President Bush — require that some older street signs be replaced by 2018. Oft-cited new requirements include changing signs in all-caps to mixed-case, increasing font sizes and improving reflectivity. News outlets have reported that the changes would cost New York City $27.6 million and Milwaukee nearly $2 million. Online commenters were outraged, and so was LaHood.

“Thanks to a few erroneous news stories, many Americans don’t have a good understanding of what these recommendations entail,” LaHood wrote on his Fast Lane blog. “For example, most of these requirements allow existing street signs to remain in place until the end of their useful life emphasis LaHood’s. And rules about upper- and lower-case lettering are not required unless a sign was being replaced anyway. The idea is to help aging Baby Boomers read road signs more easily.”

While the cost of New York City’s $27.6 million sign replacement project may seem staggering, the money is largely financing the replacement of worn-out signs. Of the 11,000 signs to be updated by the end of 2010, about 8,000 already were scheduled to be replaced due to wear. Still, LaHood acknowledged that replacing street signs — though an important safety issue — could be a tough cost for cities to swallow in these tough economic times. That’s why the highway administration is requesting additional public comment through Jan. 14.

“Now, you’ve heard me say time and time again that safety is this Department’s top priority,” LaHood wrote. “But I also believe in good government. Listening to the public ensures that we achieve both.”

We’re sure he’ll get an earful.

Photo: Rennett Stowe / Flickr

OSHKOSH, Wisconsin – Terrafugia, the company currently leading the way in flying cars, has unveiled the latest version of  its “roadable aircraft.” The new design includes several structural changes aimed at improving the, er, roadable aircraft’s safety and flying characteristics.

Whatever you call it, Terrafugia expects to fly one of the funky contraptions to the big AirVenture show here in Oshkosh next year.

The new design includes several performance improvements according to the company, and dare we say, it looks a little better too.

A model of the new design is on display here at Oshkosh next to the proof-of-concept vehicle that has made several short flights. The new design looses the small canard wing at the front and sports a revised wing. And area between the fuselage and the tail is now open, allowing for a larger propeller.

Powered by a 100 horsepower, four cylinder aircraft engine, the new Transition design is a rear wheel drive car that will meet all of the federal highway safety regulations for a sport utility vehicle. Terrafugia says it will have a flying cruise speed of 105 mph and a range of nearly 500 miles before needing to land and drive to a gas station.

As cool as the idea of a flying car is, they’ve always faced one big criticism since the idea was first put forward more than 75 years ago: You get a mediocre car and a mediocre airplane. The Transition is obviously more of an airplane than it is a car designed for running to the grocery store. Terrafugia co-founder and CEO Carl Dietrich believes many pilots or potential pilots will trade some of the performance of a conventional aircraft for the the ability to park an airplane in their garage or drive home in bad weather.

“The added freedom and convenience provides a flexibility that can’t be found in any other vehicle,” he says, “and for that people are willing to give up a couple knots of airspeed.”

The interior of the new Transition has also been refined with touch screen panels that change appearance from car-like gauges to aircraft instruments depending upon whether you’re flying or driving. The steering wheel is used on the road; a collapsible control stick is used in the air. Rudder pedals are located to the outside of the traditional brake and accelerator pedals used for driving.

Dietrich says the design changes combined with the crash safety features normally only found in a car make the Transition the safest light sport aircraft on the market. The company recently received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration for a higher gross weight to accommodate the need for car-like safety equipment.

The original Transition made several short flights, though they were limited and did not expand the flight envelope very far. Terrafugia’s chief test pilot Phil Meteer says the new design eliminates some thrust related pitch issues they were aware of with the original design.

One interesting flight characteristic of the Transition comes from the four wheel gear configuration. Meteer says unlike most aircraft that have a tricycle configuration, the four wheels of the Transition make it very predicable during take off and landing.

“I’ve been up to a hundred miles an hour and its rock solid on the ground.”

Meteer also says the wheel configuration means the airplane can land and take off at higher speeds. Because the rear wheels are so far behind the center of gravity, it requires extra airspeed to rotate during the take off run. This means the Transition needs a longer runway, but Meteer notes it also means the pilot is well above stall speed when it is close to the ground.

“It’s very positive, you’re already 25 knots above stall speed when you take off, which is a big safety factor.” he says.

During the landing Meteer says the pilot can fly at higher speeds than normal and once the rear wheels touch the ground, the nose comes down instead of bouncing the airplane back into the air as would be more likely in a traditional airplane.

Terrafugia says it is re-evaluating the price for the Transition. The company has received deposits from more than 80 customers. A previously announced price was $194,000. Meteer says the new design should be making its first drive later this year, and first flights are expected early next year.

Images: Terrafugia