Embodying the truest spirit of aerospace engineering: Hindustan University.

05 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by theflyingengineer in General Aviation Interest

Tags

Aeronautical, Aerospace, Chennai, Engineering, Hindustan, India, University

Hindustan University offers what no-one else in India can, today: a course in aeronautical and aerospace engineering with a level of exposure that is unmatched. Unlike other universities in India, and like universities of repute overseas, the Hindustan Group has an active and reputed flight school (Orient Flight School), an aviation college offering a Diploma in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering (HIET), and a degree in aeronautical and aerospace engineering at Hindustan University. This allows the university to cross-feed knowledge and resources across its group, to the benefit of its students.

What sets the university apart? Many things: studying at the university is like living in an airplane hangar: complete aircraft, aircraft parts, and systems are seen everywhere. The university also gives its students time on a flight simulator, and real time on a real airplane at their flight school. The university also encourages deserving students by sending them overseas for events of high exposure value: airshows. It also has a TIFAC core, and more, detailed in an article about the university.

In short, those who study at Hindustan University are well rounded. The proof of the pudding is in the eating: The Flying Engineer got to randomly interview two students on their awareness about an aircraft and its systems. The honest result? They were more aware about aircraft parts and systems than aero students from IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Chennai whom The Flying Engineer had interacted with.

The flip side of the college: its research focus is very low, and which the university acknowledges, but is apparently working towards resolving. But research at the undergraduate level isn’t as important as laying strong foundations. Strong foundations give a student a bright future with multiple options; weak foundations from even a higly reputed university can at most get a student a job.

Learn more, and why, about HITS – Hindustan University – a place with the right ingredients for a degree in aerospace and aeronautical engineering, by CLICKING HERE.

Aeromodelling: Making better design engineers

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by theflyingengineer in General Aviation Interest

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Aerospace, airplane, controlled, design, Engineer, future, Radio

One of the reasons why many established companies feel graduate engineers are “unemployable”, is because the education system in the country lays greater emphasis on knowledge rather than understanding. Even more disheartening is the generalized view held by many Head of Departments of Aerospace Engineering: that students who choose Aerospace Engineering are mostly those who could not secure an admission into any other branch of engineering with better placement prospects, in the college.

The enemies of the Indian aerospace engineers of tomorrow are: passion (the lack of it, except in those who consciously choose the field), and understanding (the lack of it, thanks to the education system). Knowledge has never been an issue, with libraries filled with too many texts and titles.

To really understand aerodynamics, students must design an airplane, build the airplane, fly the airplane, test the airplane, and characterize the airplane.

Designing and building an airplane are opportunities that students do not, and usually will not get. No company would like to risk a program by roping in raw engineering graduates. It usually takes years of experience before a design responsibility is awarded to an engineer. And engineers do not usually build airplanes: they get them built.

But without the exposure to design and construction, basics of aerodynamics and structures do not sink in.

Although perceived by many as “toys”, aeromodelling is the closest any student of aerospace engineering is going to get to designing, building, testing, and characterizing an aircraft, from an aerodynamics, powerplant and structures point of view. Aeromodelling is defined as, “the hobby of building and flying model aircraft”. The aircraft are usually controlled from ground, with a radio controlled transmitter and receiver.

Unfortunately, the handful of aerospace engineering students in the country who take up aeromodelling related activities in the university pick up kits, which allow them to assemble an aircraft, with instructions. This is construction, sometimes plain assembly, but not design.

The truest spirit of aerospace engineering calls for the design of a radio-controlled aircraft, analysis of the radio controlled aircraft, fabrication of the radio controlled aircraft, and test flying the aircraft. An activity, if made compulsory in the education system at the university level, will have a strong impact on the future set of aerospace engineers in the country, and hopefully, the aerospace programs, none of which have made the country proud, yet.

Serious Business: Mahindra Aerospace

24 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by theflyingengineer in General Aviation Interest, Manufacturer

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

-8, 10, 18, 5, Aerospace, aircraft, Australia, Commuter, GA, GippsAERO, India, Mahindra, manufacturing, NAL, NM, Normal

Mahindra Aerospace GA-8 Airvan at Aero India 2011

This article focuses only on airplane manufacturing and does not cover aerospace services or aerospace manufacturing services. In this article: Mahindra Aerospace’s story: how it was born; 8 seat piston to be manufactured near Bangalore, in 2 years time; GippsAERO brandname no longer exists, replaced by Mahindra Aerospace; Mahindra eyeing Beechcraft.

The birth and growth of Mahindra Aerospace

Mahindra’s foray into the aerospace segment was with the acquisition of 88.41% stake in Plexion Technologies (India) Limited (Plexion) in the year 2006. The main aim was to complement and help grow Mahindra Engineering Services portfolio in the automotive sector. But Plexion also offered Engineering Services to the Aerospace sector.

Plexion’s modest presence in aerospace made the Mahindra group ponder over the prospect of stepping into the aviation industry, for a year. Seeing the potential, the Mahindra group chose to focus on aircraft, and aerospace structures, creating the Mahindra Aerospace division in 2007, to expand the group’s existing automotive design and manufacturing expertise to the aerospace industry. The majority acquisition of Plexion brought to Mahindra the NM-5, a 5 seat (including the pilot’s) airplane being developed by NAL (and now with Mahindra in a 50:50 partnership) as an extension to the 2 seat Hansa aircraft.

But it was only in 2009 that Mahindra entered the aerospace manufacturing segment with the simultaneous acquisition of a majority stake in two Australian companies, Aerostaff Australia and Gippsland Aeronautics, which later became GippsAERO. While one is a component manufacturer of high-precision close-tolerance aircraft components and assemblies for large aerospace OEMs, essential to catapult M&M into the burgeoning Defence Offset and Commercial Aviation market, Gippsland Aeronautics (GA) is an established general aviation aircraft manufacturer, known primarily for its piston powered 8 seat GA-8 Airvan.

The NM-5 program got a boost with the capabilities that GippsAERO brought with it. 5 years after the preliminary design of the aircraft commenced, the aircraft took to the skies, although in Australia, on 1st September 2011 and lasted 45 minutes. The aircraft is yet to be certified.

An stretched version of the GA-8, the turboprop GA-10, with the capability to seat 10 persons, first flew in the May of 2012, and is expected to be certified in the first quarter of 2014. Prior to the acquisition, GippsAERO in 2008 had announced that it had won bidding to take over the type certificate of the Australian Government Aircraft Factories (GAF) Nomad’s design, renaming it the GA-18, and will re-engineer (the original design was problematic and resulted in 32 write-offs, claiming 76 lives) and put back into production the 18 seat airplane, once the GA-10’s certification is through.

Since the February of 2013, as part of a unified branding strategy, the “GippsAERO” name has been dropped and replaced by Mahindra Aerospace, renaming the aircraft portfolio Mahindra Aerospace GA-8, GA-10 and GA-18.

Acquisition is preferable to organic growth, especially for a starter in aerospace, today. “You cannot spend a lot of time developing three or four aircraft and getting them certified,” said Arvind Mehra, executive director and chief executive of Mahindra Aerospace, in an interview with Flightglobal, years back. “This would take forever. We looked at various targets, and finally bought GippsAERO in Australia, which gave us three aircraft (GA-8, GA-10, GA-18) on day one.”

This is no different from Bombardier’s approach. The Canadian planemaker got into aerospace in 1986 with the acquisition of Canadair, followed by the acquisition of Short Brothers, Learjet, de Havilland Aircraft: all of which produced excellent aircraft but were in the red.

According to Bloomberg, Mahindra Aerospace has now set its sights on the acquisition of Beechcraft Corporation, the aircraft manufacturer known for its popular King Air turboprops, Beechcraft Baron, and Beechcraft Bonanza, and the Hawker series of Business Jets, but had entered bankruptcy in May 2012, and exited Bankruptcy in the February of 2013, and is looking at auctioning off its business, for around US$ 1.5B.

Richard Aboulafia, an analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Virginia, feels, “[Mahindra’s] own indigenous development program, which is what they’ve been looking at, has a much higher risk than acquiring Beechcraft. If you can get a good deal on an existing family of planes, that’s definitely an easier way.” Besides, it opens the doors to the North American aerospace industry.

But acquiring the troubled plane maker which is planning on shutting its business jet production and focusing only on its piston and turboprop offerings, may deter Mahindra with the US$1.5B figure.

Local Airplane manufacturing

Narsapur, 40 kilometres from the aviation capital of India, Bangalore, witnessed the setup of Mahindra Aerospace’s manufacturing facility, in technical collaboration with Aeronova, a Spanish company specialising in the design and manufacture of major airframe assemblies. In 2 years, the GA-8 is expected to be manufactured in the country, making it the first private player to build certified aircraft in the normal and commuter categories, in the country.

The inauguration of this facility helps realise the dreams of Mahindra Aerospace. In the August of 2011, while announcing the development of the manufacturing facility at Narsapur, Hemant Luthra, President – Mahindra Systech, which takes care of the group’s aero service business, and member of the Group Executive Board, expressed the group’s ambitions. “From the family of Mahindra Aerospace planes that include the NM5, we would be disappointed if in 3-5 years time we were not clocking a rate of 100 aircraft per annum in India. This rate could get accelerated if we include exports to China and other countries.”

In the same year, Mehra had said to Flightglobal that he sees Mahindra Aerospace becoming the Embraer of India, carving out a niche in a world dominated by big Western players. “Embraer grew out of a country with no aviation experience. They competed with Boeing and Airbus and made a space for themselves. Embraer is a beautiful story.”

Nominated for 2013 Aerospace Media Awards: Best Young Journalist

27 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by theflyingengineer in General Aviation Interest

≈ 18 Comments

Tags

2013, Aerospace, Awards, Media

Vasuki Prasad, who writes as The Flying Engineer, was one of seven finalists for the 2013 Best Young Journalist Award, announced during the 2013 Aerospace Media Awards, which was held on the 16^th of June, 2013, in Paris at the “historic” venue of the Aero Club de France.

The Aerospace Media Dinner 2013, which institutionalised this award, was held in association with Flight Safety Foundation. Sponsors of the event included Dassault Falcon, Eurofighter Typhoon, CAE, Boeing and Rockwell Collins.

Beth Stevenson, who works as staff reporter for Digital Battlespace and Unmanned Vehicles magazines, emerged on stage, with Richard de Crespigny, the pilot in command of the famous Qantas Flight 32, which suffered an uncontained engine explosion when climbing out of Singapore, handing the award.

The Flying Engineer is known for in depth interviews, reports, and analysis focused on the technical and operational aspects of civil aviation. The Flying Engineer regularly contributes to SP’s Airbuz from SP Guide Publications, besides focusing on the design, development and manufacture of professional flight simulators, and solid state airborne navigation and anti-collision lights. Previously with Honeywell, The Flying Engineer has two United States Patent Applications in the field of aviation lighting (airborne and ground).