Category Archives: Flying

If you get a chance to go to a NASA Social, I recommend taking it. They’re wonderful! Last week I was lucky enough to attend my fifth. For this event we saw demonstrations of the LEAPTech project at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center. Friday I showed what LEAPTech is (“Leading Edge Asynchronous Propeller Technology”), Saturday I tried to take you along on our trip out onto the Rogers Dry Lake to watch a LEAPTech data run using HEIST, and yesterday our visit to the F-15 hangar was covered.

The next stop was a wonderful place I first saw last November on my first NASA Social. Robert “Red” Jensen invited us into the Subscale Flight Research Lab (SFRL), where he’s been building remotely piloted, scale model aircraft for many years. If a mission or experiment is too dangerous, too untried, or too expensive to try with a full-sized, piloted aircraft, Red and his crew will build and fly a model to test the concept until it matures enough to step up to the full-sized, piloted stage.

In doing this, there are constantly needs for unique parts. Whether it is a structural part for a plane or just a case to hold some equipment in the plane, the SFRL is using 3D printing to quickly and cheaply build and test parts. Even if a part will eventually need to be machined, building it first with 3D printing lets you make sure that it’s correct, and make changes if necessary.

Behind Red in this picture you can see their 3D printer. It’s a big one, with a 10 x 10 x 10 inch printing cavity, and a manufacturing resolution of 1/10,000 inch. Not something that the average hobbyist will have, but it lets them do in hours or days what would take weeks or months if they had to do everything in steel or aluminum.

Shelved for the moment in the SFRL are “Droid 1” and “Droid 2,” used in numerous previous experiments. There’s an excellent NASA video here that shows how “Droid 2” was used in development of AutoGCAS. (That’s “Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System” to you and me.)

I went into the AutoGCAS system at some length in my previous article, but the short version is that software has been developed to work with a plane’s autopilot and keep track of where the plane is compared to a 3D map. When a ground collision is imminent, AutoGCAS takes over from the pilot and flies the plane to safety (usually in a matter of seconds) before returning control to the pilot.

When the system was developed using “Droid 2” (see that video) the software and 3D map of the entire planet were put on a cellphone, which was used to control “Droid 2.” Yeah, a cellphone. One. No mainframes, no PCs, no huge, fancy computer systems. A cell phone.

This software is currently flying in many US military jets. Red told us that it has been credited with at least two “saves” in the past few months in aircraft involved in the Middle East, and there may be more that they don’t know about. In addition, a version is being worked on that will be available to private pilots (like myself) and while it won’t interface with the autopilot to take control, it will run on a tablet or smartphone to warn the pilot of imminent danger and to tell them which way to go to escape.

Behind Red in this picture you can see his current big project, a newer, larger model to test the Prandtl wing design. (We’ll talk more about that below.) Student interns have opportunities to work in the SFRL (under staff supervision) to build models such as this. The Prandtl design is an interesting one and I’m looking forward to seeing where this next series of tests goes.

In the foreground you can see a octagonal (eight rotors) drone which is being assembled to monitor test flights from a new perspective. For example, the F-15’s we saw yesterday, flying at 600 mph, aren’t very good at chasing a scale model flying at 60 mph. But a drone like this could do it quite nicely.

Here’s the camera rig on the bottom of the octagonal drone. These guys get to do the coolest things with the neatest toys! How do I get a job here?

Following the SFRL tour, we were taken to get a close look at the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV). Again, this is something that I had seen in November, but then it was mostly hidden back behind the original M2-F1 lifting body. That pioneer aircraft is now at the Museum of the Air Force in Dayton, so we got to get a much clearer view of the LLRV.

In that previous article I have links to a couple of videos about the history of this vehicle as well as other details. In brief, five of these aircraft were used during the Apollo program to train the astronauts to land on the moon. Neil Armstrong almost died when one went out of control (he ejected out, his parachute opened when he was just feet above the ground, he went back to his office and finished the afternoon as if nothing had happened) and all of the astronauts who landed on the moon trained in this vehicle or one of the others in Houston. In total, three of the five were destroyed in crashes, but they got the job done. Flying the LLRV turned out to be an excellent simulation for landing on the moon.

The LLRV was powered by this General Electric CF-700-2V turbofan engine. It was mounted to point downward on a gimbal so that it could be pivoted and aimed through a wide range. There were also some very clever hardware-based simulation modes, which would automatically compensate for factors such as wind gusts, which of course would not be found on the lunar descent.

The engine had 4,200 pounds of thrust, but the LLRV with a pilot and fuel weighed almost 4,000 pounds, so the LLRV could barely get off the ground more than 500 feet, hover, maneuver, and land. The total time of a flight was usually only five to seven minutes, with a total flight endurance capacity of just ten minutes. After using all of the engine’s thrust to take off and climb to several hundred feet, the engine was throttled back to hover and simulate a descent to the lunar surface.

The pilot’s compartment on the LLRV was sparse and designed to simulate the Apollo Lunar Module as much as possible. The controls were as close to the LM’s as possible. You can see how visibility in the pilot’s compartment was deliberately restricted, to closely match what the pilot would see on descent to the moon. Pitch, roll, and yaw were controlled by sixteen small hydrogen peroxide thrusters, mounted in pairs.

Large yellow and black striped handle connected to the ejection seat. In an emergency (three of the five vehicles had them and used the ejection seat) it would take the pilot out at 14 Gs to about 250. The seats developed for the LLRV were the first “zero-zero” ejection seats, meaning that they were designed to work on a vehicle with zero altitude and zero airspeed. Up until that time, ejection seats in military fighters primarily used small rockets or spring systems to simply get the pilot clear of the aircraft, assuming that once separated from the plane the plane would get out of the pilot’s way and there would be significant altitude for parachute deployment. A zero-zero seat on the other hand uses a much larger rocket and drives the pilot up and away from the aircraft, immediately and rapidly deploying the parachute, allowing it to be used even from a resting position.

Above I talked about the new, larger Prandtl wing being built by Red Jensen in the SFRL. Here’s the smaller one, which was built by students in the SFRL in 2013 and recently finished its test program. This one is being boxed up to be sent to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington, DC.

The Prandtl wing attempts to correct a basic flaw in every wing built, from the Wright Brothers onward. There’s a phenomenon known as “adverse yaw” which will swing the nose of the aircraft in the direction opposite of the direction of turn when the aircraft banks. In other words, if you turn left, the nose will try to swing right, and vice versa. In a conventional airplane, this is countered by use of the rudder or very fancy computer controls. (Think of the B-2 bombers for the latter.) If this isn’t done correctly, you get an “uncoordinated” turn, which can make your passengers queasy or be quite dangerous a low speeds. (Why am I hearing my flight instructor repeating “Step on the ball!!” over and over?)

On the other hand, as we were asked, have you ever seen a bird with a vertical stabilizer or rudder? Obviously not – so how do they do it? The answer might have been found by Ludwig Prandtl in the 1920s. Prandtl was a pioneering engineer and mathematician who developed many of the key concepts we use today in aerodynamics. His theoretical wing controls adverse yaw by using wingtip controls instead of a rudder. (Birds do it by using their muscles and feathers to warp and change the shape of the wing, creating a similar effect.)

NASA Armstrong will be testing their larger model in the upcoming months. Depending on how it goes, in thirty years your commercial airliner from LA to Dallas might be shaped more like an oversized B-2 flying wing instead of the standard “tube & wings” design. (Gee, wouldn’t it be more efficient in that design to use a LEAPTech design to power it? Hmmm… I’m seeing some synergies here.)

This scale model of an F-15 fighter (1/4 scale?) was built and flown remotely to test multiple advanced systems that are now in everyday use on the aircraft still in service.

The final thing in this hangar is that large wall mural you can see over on the far side behind the other NASA Social attendees in our group (and Kevin Rohrer leaning on the LLRV telling us about it). I wish that I had gotten a better picture of it, but the story we heard about it was just fascinating to me.

The mural was put together (it’s a composite photo) and from the start of the Shuttle program at Edwards it gathered mission patches and crew signatures. Beginning with the earliest “free flight” drop tests of Enterprise, all the way through the final Shuttle landing at Edwards with Discovery finishing the STS-128 mission in September 2009, crews and support staff would celebrate a successful mission by applying mission logos along the top and finding a place to sign.

To a geeky space cadet like myself, this makes the mural invaluable. To everyone at NASA Armstrong (then named NASA Dryden) it was something that was sort of in the way when they were remodeling. They of course didn’t just trash it, but it got cut out of the wall and stored here until they can figure out where to put it. It might go to another museum, such as the Museum of the Air Force, or to some other NASA facility. For now, it’s just gathering dust here with the LLRV.

(If they end up not being able to figure out what to do with it, they have my number. I’m thinking it would look FANTASTIC in my house somewhere. Just sayin’.)

(And no, I’m not sure that The Long-Suffering Wife would agree with that decorating choice, but she loves me and I’m sure we could figure it out. Right, dear?)

Tomorrow, I’ll finish up with two more stops on our tour of the Center and some final comments.

This week I attended my fifth NASA Social. At the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center the main focus was the LEAPTech project. Yesterday I wrote about what LEAPTech (“Leading Edge Asynchronous Propeller Technology”) is and what it has the potential to mean in the not-so-distant future. Once we had seen presentations from several of the project scientists and engineers, we headed out onto Rogers Dry Lake to see a test run of the initial LEAPTech test rig.

Due to the nature of the work being done there by the Air Force and NASA Armstrong, one does not normally get access to the lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base unless one works there, has a security clearance, and has a reason to be out there. As has happened at every NASA Social I’ve attended, this was a point where the “geeky, über-cool” factor ratcheted up a couple of notches.

Once out on the lake bed runway, we got our first opportunity to see the test rig up close and personal. As you can see, it’s a basic, heavy-duty truck rig that’s been modified quite a bit. The two primary modifications in the HEIST (“Hybrid-Electric Integrated System Testbed”) serve to lift the wing up out of “ground effect” and into “clean air”, and to dampen out almost all of the vibrations and bumps coming from the rolling truck body.

From the front you can see that this test setup has eighteen props. It’s quite a departure from the normal one or two big engines on today’s propeller-driven airplanes. It’s hoped that the difference will allow a 500% increase in power efficiency, a huge increase in low-speed maneuverability and stability, and a drastic reduction in the noise created by the propellers.

This is what a couple dozen NASA Social members look like taking pictures, taking selfies, tweeting, Instagramming, FaceBooking, and so on.

We were fortunate that it was only about 75°F out there, although the wind was a real pain. As with any desert locale, in the winter it can be brutally cold out here, and in the summer it can be way, way over 100°F.

Here you can see the propellers on one side of the test wing. Notice that the propellers on alternating blades are counter-rotating. Also notice the video camera rig on the top and all of the data cables coming down the support framework.

If this wing seems small, note that one of the aspects of LEAPTech is that the added efficiency of the design in generating lift will hopefully allow a significant reduction in the size of the wing. The wing, propellers, and test rig here are smaller than they would be on a two- or four-person aircraft, but not by much.

As mentioned yesterday, in designing their tests to be carried out this way in the real world, the LEAPTech team is able to quickly test a whole range of variables quickly and much more cheaply than they could using a wind tunnel.

For example, in testing for noise reductions or power output, does it matter if the blades counter-rotate? Does it matter if every other one counter-rotates or is there another pattern that gives better performance? Is it better to have all the props the same size, or should they be larger on the inside, or on the outside? How does changing the arrangement and size of the propellers affect the loading on the wing and the amount of lift generated?

These are all questions that can be put into mathematical models, but models all have assumptions and approximations built in them. By comparing the models’ predictions against the real world data, the models can be refined and improved. The models in turn can then be counted on to give more reliable predictions. This feedback between the two systems is a powerful way to make significant progress quickly.

Once we’re all done taking pictures, it’s time to back off a few hundred meters for safety reasons. Safety is a key component of everything they do at NASA Armstrong and Edwards Air Force Base. We saw this all the time during our stay – FOD removal & control, safety briefings, insistence that we all slather ourselves in sunblock before going out onto the lake bed, and other precautions were constantly in place to make sure everything went smoothly and safely.

It obviously paid off. We didn’t have a single casualty among the NASA Social attendees!

The HEIST rig trundled off a mile or more down the runway, soon visible only the the tiny cloud of dust that it was kicking up. It was soon lost in the mirage on the lake bed surface. After we all got our camera gear ready, we got the heads-up from one of the test engineers that the run had started. Again we could see that tiny plume of dust, but now it was coming toward us.

There was a wicked wind coming from the north (our right) and on this run the HEIST was running almost directly into the wind. This was a relatively low speed test as measured by the rig’s ground speed, 40 mph. By going directly into the 27 mph wind, the effective speed of the air over the wing was 67 mph.

After disappearing into the distance to the north, after a minute or so we got the word that the HEIST was coming back. This time with the wind at their back, they were driving along at 65 mph, but with the 27 mph wind at their back, their effective speed of air over the wing was only 38 mph. That gives them a nice range of data sets. From our vantage point standing still near the runway, we saw only the difference between the 40 mph first run and the 65 mph second.

After the runs were over we got one more chance to take pictures and ask questions out on the lake bed. Then it was back on the bus (in a non-sunburned conditioned we hoped, after putting on all of that sunblock goop and, as one person put it, “smelling like the crowd at Santa Monica beach”) and back to the conference center for lunch and more Q&A with the project engineers and scientists.

Tomorrow, a couple more notes on the lake bed, then we’re off to see some of the other aircraft and projects being run by NASA Armstrong.

On Tuesday this week I had the opportunity to attend my fifth NASA Social. This time I was back at the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, about ninety minutes north of Los Angeles in the Antelope Valley.

The main focus of this NASA Social was the LEAPTech project. LEAPTech stands for “Leading Edge Asynchronous Propeller Technology.” We’ll get to what that means.

When we were out here for the “FlyNASA” event in November, there were some delays in getting us all on base in our individual cars. This time we met off base and were brought in on an Air Force bus, which made it a piece of cake.

These events start early. We were at the sign to be picked up at 0700, which for me meant being out of bed at 0345 and picking up other Social attendees at 0600 (many folks coming in from out of town didn’t have cars). There aren’t many things I’ll happily get up that early for – a NASA Social is one of them.

This is where they store the nation’s strategic reserve of flat, hard, and empty.

Edwards Air Force Base is centered around the Rogers Dry Lake, an ancient lake that long ago dried up and left a really big, really hard, and really flat surface. That’s perfect if you want to test aircraft that might be having any sort of emergency and need to land whenever and wherever they can. No need for any conventional paved runways, although they do have four of them. All of the other runways (over a dozen) are simply lines laid out on the lake bad.

That’s perfect if you have an experimental aircraft (or spacecraft) that might need more room to land than a conventional paved runway has, or might not be able to hit the runway exactly on the mark. You’re a little bit sideways? No worries. You need to land long and then roll for a few miles? No worries. This is why the first Space Shuttle “drop tests” or “free flight tests” were done here, the first two Shuttle flights landed here, with a total of 54 Shuttle landings at Edwards.

Once at the Armstrong Flight Research Center, we got checked in and made official. (Yeah, there’s a typo in my name, but they’re not the first and won’t be the last.)

The public information office at Armstrong is lead by Kevin Rohrer (at left), and this NASA Social was the first one run by Anna Kelley (at right). We got introduced to each other, got settled in, and got started.

Dennis Hines, Director of Programs at NASA Armstrong, welcomed us and started to introduce us to LEAPTech.

NASA Armstrong has six primary research goals. All of them are important for our air traffic control system and next generation aircraft designs, but some are more “flashy” than others. For example, item #2 there, “Innovation in Commercial Supersonic Aircraft,” is finding ways to reduce sonic booms to the point where commercial aircraft can fly over land without bothering people at the surface. This will allow future aircraft to fly supersonic anywhere, not just over the oceans like the British/French Concorde did.

The LEAPTech program falls under both the “Ultra-Efficient Commercial Vehicles” and “Transition to Low-Carbon Propulsion” areas. Put as simply as possible, LEAPTech is trying to replace today’s two or four huge jet engines slung under the aircraft wing with an array of much smaller engines placed along the leading edge of the wing.

This has a lot of potential benefits. It will let the wing be smaller but with better handling and maneuverability, particularly at low speeds. It will be more efficient, by a factor of five or more. It will use electricity from batteries (much like today’s electric cars) instead of fossil fuels. Best of all, it will be much, much more quiet than today’s jet engines.

The efficiency gains come from the more efficient nature of electric power versus jet engines. Today’s best jet engines are only about 23% efficient in turning energy (fuel) into thrust, where electrical motors are more than 97% efficient. When you add in the gains from having a smaller and more efficient wing, you can get up to a factor of five improvement.

Testing the LEAPTech concept is the first hurdle to clear. This is a small program, working fast and cheap. A more conventional program might test its designs in a wind tunnel. But wind tunnel facilities are expensive and access is limited. It could take two years just to get on the schedule, and the testing there would be bigger than the entire budget for the program.

Instead they’re taking an idea used by Scaled Composites in Mojave when they were designing some of the Virgin Galactic vehicles. Instead of going to a very controlled, rigid, and expensive test environment in a wind tunnel, they simply built their hardware, put it onto the top of a truck, and ran it along the runway. By taking data in the real world, being quick and flexible in making changes and repeating the tests, they were able to move ahead much more quickly on their project.

LEAPTech took the Scaled Composites idea and upgraded it to benefit from some of the lessons that Scaled learned. Out of that came HEIST, the “Hybrid-Electric Integrated Systems Testbed.” It puts the LEAPTech wing and engines higher off the ground and out of ground effect (a phenomenon that affects an aircraft’s lift when very near the ground). They also found ways to stabilize the test rig, isolating it from the truck body so that vibrations and bumps from the running vehicle won’t affect the data being collected.

Starr Ginn and Mark Moore (the project’s Principal Investigator) gave us the big picture of how LEAPTech will work and why it’s such a big deal. For example, you know those winglets on the tips of almost every commercial jet these days? Those were developed by NASA Armstrong and save about 3% in fuel for the airlines. That might not seem like much, but for someone like United or American Airlines, 3% savings on fuel can be billions of dollars over a couple of years. So what if some of this technology can save 10% in the 2020’s?

The other big deal is the noise reduction. A typical propeller has 300 or so horsepower going into three or four blades. That’s about 100 horsepower per blade, a lot of which is turned into noise, and the blades are all putting out noise at the same frequency, multiplying the effect. That’s why propeller planes can be so loud. (As someone who loves the sound of our P-51, Bearcat, or Spitfire roaring to life at the CAF, I don’t see what the problem is, but maybe it’s not about me.)

Now replace that one or two props with eighteen much smaller ones, each with five blades. Each engine has only forty or fifty horsepower, spread out over five blades, so each blade makes much less noise to begin with. Instead of a roar, the sound is more like a loud cloud of buzzing bees. That’s when the “Asynchronous” part of LEAPTech comes in. With the electric motors, you can have each propeller spinning at a slightly different frequency without losing thrust. By doing that, you spread the noise out even more. The final sound ends up sounding a lot like the old Jetsons’ car.

Having met a whole slew of project engineers and scientists and seen dozens of slides and charts, it was time to see the real deal. We got back on the bus and headed out toward the lake bed. While we were stopped to wait for clearance and to check the bus tires for FOD (Foreign Object Debris), Mark Moore answered questions. He’s a really passionate guy about this project!

Finally, just before we got out on the lake, we got our first view of HEIST and the LEAPTech rig on top of it. It was time to follow them out and see some actual engineering and science being done.

Tomorrow, the lake bed and the test run.