Lycoming Engines has begun overhauling the heavy-fuel powerplants in AAI’s Aerosonde Mk 4.7 unmanned aircraft systems, and will make design changes intended to improve the engines’ reliability, say executives. Continue reading
Category Archives: Aircraft Propulsion & Energy
Solar Powered High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite Successful Test Flight
Astrium has successfully completed the first flight of its long endurance Zephyr solar powered High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS) since it acquired the assets of the Zephyr programme in March 2013 from QinetiQ in the UK. Continue reading
Rolls-Royce to Develop New Services Facility for Global Hawk Engines
Rolls-Royce will open a new engine depot services facility at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma to support the US Air Force Global Hawk fleet. The company has been awarded a $49 million contract to establish the new facility, which is expected to begin operations in 2015. Continue reading
Northrop Grumman Readies MQ-8C Fire Scout for Flight Operations
Northrop Grumman Corporation turned on the power to the U.S. Navy’s first MQ-8C Fire Scout unmanned helicopter and rotated the aircraft’s four blades for the first time during initial ground testing and engine runs at Naval Base Ventura County Point Mugu, California, on Sept. 20. Continue reading
Mainstream Engineering Gets US Air Force Contract for Hybrid Electric UAS Propulsion System
Mainstream Engineering Corporation, a 27-year-old Brevard County research and manufacturing company, has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Air Force to develop a hybrid electric propulsion system to support a rapid-response small unmanned aircraft system (UAS). Continue reading
Solara – Five Years in the Sky at 65,000 Feet
Imagine a featherweight aircraft built of composites boasting an enormous 160 foot wing, swathed in solar cells that can take off at 20 mph and remain aloft for five years. The plane would fly at 65,000 feet, above most air traffic aside from the odd U-2 zooming past. It would, without a doubt, be the loneliest plane in history. Continue reading
B-2 Inflight Refuelling Video
The US Military just released this inflight video of a KC-135 receiving fuel and also giving fuel to a B-2 mid-flight. Continue reading
U.S. Army Research Laboratory DEvelops ‘Long-Lived Power’
“Long-Lived Power” sounds like it could be an energy revolution, a revolutionary of sorts within the family of far-reaching energy solutions for the battlefield — because it uses radioisotopes. Continue reading