EP82 – Sydney Seaplanes Adds EVTOL Order, Airbus A350 Has Lightning Protection Problems & More

STRUCK: An Aerospace Engineering & Lightning Protection Show

Sydney Seaplanes placed a large aircraft order from Eve Urban Air Mobility, a division of Embraer. Will it work out for them? The Airbus A350 has lightning protection issues stemming from expanded metal foils and paint peeling, leading to a contentious relationship between Airbus and Qatar. We also discuss new EVTOL designs, FAA regulations and more. Learn more about Weather Guard StrikeTape segmented lightning diverters and aircraft lightning protection consulting services. Follow the show on YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit us on the web. Have a question we can answer on the show? Email us! Transcript Sydney Seaplanes Adds EVTOL Order, Airbus A350 Has Lightning Protection Problems & More 00:00:00:05 - 00:00:24:10UnknownThis episode is brought to you by weather guard Lightning Tech at Weather Guard. We support design engineers and make lightning protection easy. You're listening to the Struck podcast. I'm Dan Blewett. I'm Allen Hall. And here on Struck we talk about everything aviation, aerospace engineering and lightning protection. 00:00:28:09 - 00:00:43:05UnknownAll right, welcome back to the Struck Aerospace Engineering podcast. I'm your co-host Dan Blewett. On today's show, we've got number one something for Allen to really dig his teeth in. We've got some issues with Airbus aircraft and their lightning protection systems. 00:00:43:15 - 00:01:01:16UnknownSome paint feeling some controversy over expanded metal foils, and there's a pretty heavy dispute between Qatar Airways and Airbus. We'll dove into that. We're going to talk about the Dayton Zoning Board has voted to demolish the site of the Wright Brothers first bike shop. 00:01:02:08 - 00:01:20:18UnknownYou know, disappointing decision, obviously for a huge, huge end of innovators in aviation. The grandfathers of aviation. We'll talk about United deciding to put passengers on a safe flight. Not completely safe for one engine will be completely powered by sustainable airline fuel. 00:01:21:12 - 00:01:40:04UnknownAlso, seems like a curious decision. We'll talk about Pratt, they've announced an update to their A320 neo engine. It's going to have more thrust, and we'll see how that might affect their sales and their efficiency. And lastly, in our video segment, we'll talk about Sydney Sea planes striking a big deal for 50 aircraft of Eve Urban Air Mobility 00:01:40:12 - 00:01:54:09Unknownfour passenger EVTOL. They do a lot of commuter and tourism flights down Australia, so sounds like a really interesting proposition there. And lastly, we talked a little bit about Joby's Simulator, which Allen that lacks foot pedals, right? 00:01:54:09 - 00:02:12:10UnknownAnd doesn't have a rudder. Is that right? It's a totally different configuration than most airplanes. Yeah, it seems really interesting and unique, to say the least. So let's start with Airbus and Qatar Airways. So Reuters has obtained a number of photos which are pretty shocking. 00:02:12:10 - 00:02:27:21UnknownThey they make this seem like almost a home brew, a homebrew thing like you don't see paint peeling this badly. Qatar is very unhappy with Airbus. And both sides are sort of in a little bit of a tug of war about, you know, what's going on, who's going to fix this and how big of a deal this 00:02:27:21 - 00:02:46:13Unknownis. Yeah. So the A350 is primarily a carbon fiber airplane. It like the 787, so they're comparable airplanes in that sense. And the the what Airbus has done is they've used an expanded what the article say is expanded copper foil as lightning protection. 00:02:46:13 - 00:02:59:04UnknownAnd so what you do is on the top layer, the carbon fiber, you sort of embed this, this mesh is copper mesh into it and that access your lightning protection and then that mesh gets over coated with paint. 00:02:59:04 - 00:03:14:04UnknownSo the outer surface looks white like most airplanes do. So you kind of cutting this three layer thing,