Presentation: July 2018

This month's AE presenter: Jeff
Date of presentation: 16 July 2018
Subject: Light Pollution - Saving the Dark
Description: This month's AE presentation talked about light pollution - the causes (excessive lighting, poorly shielded lighting (particularly street lights)), the effects (wasted energy, perpetually glowing sky, health and other effects on both humans and wildlife), and suggestions for ways to alleviate the problem.

Presentation: June 2018

This month's AE presenter: David
Date of presentation: 4 June 2018
Subject: Delta-winged Aircraft
Description: Delta wings provide several important benefits. As triangular structures, they are inherently strong. Delta wings are streamlined. With supersonic aircraft, the leading edge of a delta wing can be angled so that the entire wing remains in subsonic air.  Delta wings have surprisingly good low speed performance due to vortex lift, or leading edge vortexes effectively creating a highly-cambered airfoil. Delta aircraft can have conventional tails or be a tailless flying wing. If the aircraft is also a flying-wing, it will have to land at high angles of attack due to limited ability to deploy flaps.

No presentation: May 2018

Events have conspired to rob our audience of our monthly brilliance for the month of May 2018.  Apologies all around.

Presentation: April 2018

This month's AE presenter: David
Date of presentation: 23 Apr 2018
Subject: The Stratolaunch Aircraft
Description: David gave a presentation this month on the Stratolaunch aircraft. The Stratolaunch is similar in concept to Spaceship One's mothership, the White Knight. It is a twin-boomed airplane used to carry satellite boosters to approximately 50,000 feet. The booster is then dropped for launch to low earth orbit. The Stratolaunch is the largest airplane by wingspan, with a 385 foot wing, longer than the wing of the Spruce Goose. Gross weight is over 1.3 million pounds, with a 500,000 pound payload. The airplane's six engines and many of the flight components were salvaged from two Boeing 747s. The Stratolaunch is currently undergoing high speed taxi testing. Its first flight is expected to be in 2019. 

External Activity: Supported SJSU's Reid-Hillview Open House

John Heldt and David Hartman supported San Jose State's Reid-Hillview Open House on 17 March 2018. The objective of the open house was to introduce the community to aviation and aviation-related careers. John and David talked about how aviation benefits the community, and about the CAP mission.  Squadron 80's drone, assembled from a STEM kit, was displayed and used to start conversations about CAP's Cadet Programs. The morning was successful with introducing the community, airport officials, and a community leader to aviation and to CAP.

Aerospace Minute, 12 Mar 2018

On 12-Mar, David talked about military weapons being made obsolete by newer models. Here's the gist of his talk:

Recent tensions with North Korea have lead to talk of increasing the US's nuclear defenses. Russia has responded by announcing a new set of weapons designed to defeat nuclear defenses.  Russian weapons includes a Samat ICBM launched hypersonic delivery vehicle. The Kinzhal hypersonic Kenzhal, designed to be launched from a MIG-31, was tested last week. They also announced a tomahawk-style hypersonic GLCM with a "nuclear booster", it is unclear how the booster works. A new underwater drone was announced with a 100 MT warhead and 1000 mile range, four of which can be carried on an Oscar-class sub.  The US has also announced plans for new weapons systems. An RFP for a next generation manned fighter to replace the F-22 and F-35 was announced, based on concerns over China's J-31. The B-21 program is underway to replace the B-2. It can be operated manned or unmanned. The A-10 will be replaced by a new Intelligence, Surveillance, and Light Attack (ISL) aircraft. Most likely, this will be the Cessna Scorpion, a new light jet that can be flown manned or unmanned.  Data for this came from multiple sources.

Presentation: February 2018

This month's AE presenter: Jeff
Date of presentation: 12 Feb 2018 (not 100% certain)
Subject: Juno Mission - Update
Description: For February's presentation, Jeff talked about the Juno Mission (exploration of Jupiter).  The bulk of the presentation was a series of high-resolution images captured by the Juno spacecraft during its 8th, 9th, and 10th passes around Jupiter.  These images largely spoke for themselves and required only minimal explanation.

Presentation: December 2017

This month's AE presenter: Jeff
Date of presentation: 04 Dec 2017
Subject: Presentation: Aerospace Trivia Jeopardy
Description: At enormous risk to life and limb, Jeff put together a Jeopardy-like game with five Aerospace-related topics: Zeppelin, General, Airports and Airlines, Bird Strikes, and Atmospheric Considerations.  Thanks to an excellent audience warm-up by Safety Officer Sena, Jeff was able to masquerade as a fun gameshow host and guide the festivities.  A good time was had by some.

Presentation: November 2017

This month's AE presenter: David
Date of presentation: 13 Nov 2017
Subject: UAS Rules and Regulations
Description: David will have to refresh my (Jeff's) memory on this one, as I'm afraid I do not recall what this presentation was.  This is due to my own questionable memory and is no fault of David's.

Activity: Quadcopter Electronics Configuration

Date of activity: 06 Nov 2017
Subject: Quadcopter Electronics Configuration
Description: Having done some experimentation at home on his own time, David brought out the software and demonstrated some basic configuration of the electronics.  The quadcopter is still not quite ready to fly, so we were unable to test that, but we could selectively run each engine separately.

Activity: Quadcopter Electronics Installation

Date of activity: 30 Oct 2017
Subject: Quadcopter Electronics Installation
Description: With the project well underway, this evening's entertainment consisted of installing the electronics that control the quadcopter.  This proved not as easy as it sounds, and was not quite completed successfully in the available time.

Activity: Quadcopter Assembly (start)

Date of activity: 09 Oct 2017
Subject: Quadcopter Airframe Assembly
Description: David led a few brave souls in beginning the assembly of the recently-received STEM quadcopter kit.  While we were not able to complete assembly in the available time, we did get quite a bit done.

Presentation: April 2017

This month's AE presenter: David
Date of presentation: 10 Apr 2017
Subject: Quadcopter Aerodynamics
Description: I discussed how the multi-fixed-rotor design is an alternative to conventional collective-pitch rotors. Everything is a trade-off in engineering. Long, high-aspect-ration rotors are more efficient that propellers. However, large rotors have a lot of rotating mass, so thrust changes must be made using a complex swashplate to change the rotor pitch. Quadcopters with small propellers are less efficient, but simple because thrust changes can be made by changing the speed of the fixed propeller. We discussed the aerodynamics of quad copters including handling torque, yaw pitch, roll, and lift. A key enabling technology for quadcopters is the electric motor. Although flight times are usually short to keep lightweight batteries, electric motors can have up to a 5x increase in power vs. weight when compared to internal combustion motors. The discussion concluded with a brief history of multi-rotor aircraft. The first successful helicopter in 1923 was actually a quadcopter. In the near future, we will continue to see a proliferation of small UAVs based on the quadcopter design, and perhaps personal air taxis.

Presentation: March 2017

This month's AE presenter: Jeff
Date of presentation: 13 Mar 2017
Subject: Combined Safety / AE Jeopardy Game
Description: For a change of pace, safety officer Stephen Pierce and I decided to put together a joint presentation in the form of a Jeopardy-like game.  In this game we had five categories of six questions each (yes, it probably should have been the other way around!).  Three categories were AE-related: Fluid Dynamics, Air Traffic Control, and Early Aviation History.  (The other two were safety-related: ORM and Safety Regs.)  A fourth AE category, The Final Frontier, was never used.  A good time seemed to be had by all, even if the scorekeeping proved ultimately pointless.

Presentation: February 2017

This month's AE presenter: David
Date of presentation: 20 Feb 2017
Subject: STEM kit - Quadcopter
Description: From an email sent by David on 15-Feb:
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I finally received the "Build a Quad Copter" STEM kit.  Here is a summary of what I had put in the request for the kit:

•     Build the quadcopter with a couple senior members, include a couple cadets from Squadron 36.
•     Perform a density altitude experiment:
•  Fly in a cold environment, perhaps in a park outside in the morning. Baylands is a good park for this, Steven also suggested the RC park near Morgan Hill. Suspend a weight at the center of gravity, find the maximum that can be lifted.
•  Fly in a warm environment, perhaps the Squadron building with seats removed and the heater running. We should see that the max weight is less.
•     Give the following presentations to both Squadrons 80 and 36 as part of our AE program:
• General aerodynamics of a quad copter (Wikipedia on Vortex Ring State, Forbes article on what makes quadcopters so great for small drones).
• Use of drones, both commercial, hobby, SAR, and military.
• Effects of Density Altitude.
• (The above could be combined into one long preseo depending on the amount of content)

Thoughts on how to do this?  I can kick this off by giving a quick introduction to the project at the next Sq 80 meeting.
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