Seeding Plane
With skyrocketing rice prices, California farmers are turning to agricultural aviators to plant over 500,000 acres this spring. The work is dangerous and grueling and requires pilots to fly as low as 30 feet over the ground in single engine planes loaded with a ton of rice seed. Pilots can make up to 100 takeoffs and landings in a single day and use state-of-the-art GPS systems to drop loads with an accuracy of 3 feet.
Source: NY Times
Boeing has completed test flights of a two-seater airplane powered solely by fuel cells and lithium-ion batteries. During liftoff the plane used both of these power sources. Upon reaching a cruising altitude of 1000 meters, the batteries were disconnected and the plane flew for about 20 minutes at 100 km/h powered only by the fuel cells.
Fuel cells are an intriguing power system and have most commonly been used in space vehicles. They convert hydrogen directly into electricity and heat. Water is the only exhaust product.
We shouldn't expect to see commercially viable electric planes any time soon. Aviation applications will most likely include small unmanned aircraft or auxiliary power systems.
You can also download a free screensaver
General Aviation Technology Challenge
NASA and CAFE have partnered to create a new PAV Challenge for 2008. It will be a "Pentaviathon" to advance five vital General Aviation Technologies: noise reduction, fuel efficiency, speed, safety and ease of use. NASA has named the $300,000 flight competition "The General Aviation Technology Challenge". Registration for the competition officially opened on December 23, 2007. It will be conducted at CAFE's Flight Test Center in Santa Rosa, California from August 2-10, 2008.
These are minimum airborne speed test flights for the Airbus A380. Check out the crazy sparks!
Libby Culpepper, a graduate student at the Wichita State University Human Factors Laboratory, is conducting a study of the effects of age-related changes in vision, audition, motor control, and cognition in pilots. She is collecting data for this study via an on-line survey.
Here's the link: http://pilotsurvey.notlong.com/
The survey is anonymous and takes 20-30 minutes to complete. The researcher is interested in collecting data from all kinds of pilots -- young, old, male, female, commercial, private, fixed wing, rotorcraft -- you name it: If you fly any kind of aircraft, you're eligible to participate.
If you're not a pilot but would still like to participate, you can be part of the comparison group by clicking on the link above and filling in the survey as a non-pilot.
By participating in this study, you will have the option to enter in a prize drawing for a Sporty’s Pilot Shop gift certificate or cash.
If you need more information, please contact Libby Culpepper at alculpepper@wichita.edu.
The millionaire aviator has been missing since September 3rd after departing alone in a single-engine Bellanca aircraft from an airstrip 80 miles southeast of Reno, Nevada.
Using satellite imagery drawn from multiple organizations and Amazon's Mechanical Turk (a crowdsourcing platform), individuals around the world are helping to scour images for Fossett's plane.
Mechanical Turk is a web service that allows for the rapid assembly of a large human workforce to tackle tasks that are better suited for people than computers. In this case, the job is to look for a 30x20 pixel airplane in over 12 thousand satellite photos. A digital needle in the haystack.
The digital search is similar to one conducted for a well known computer scientist Jim Gray who was lost at sea earlier this year.
AirShowBuzz.com has launched a new contest and is calling on all aviation enthusiasts and pilots to enter videos, photos and stories that pertain to the theme of Dreams of Flight.
Winners will take home a Toyota FJ Cruiser and other cool prizes.
