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18 Apr 13. Daresbury offices for actuator specialist. Electric actuator supplier Olsen Engineering has opened additional offices in Daresbury, Warrington, with the aim of providing much better North West regional sales support. The company took on the extra offices, based at Sci-Tech Daresbury, in February 2013. The new space gives Olsen the means to take advantage of networking opportunities with other science and technology companies from within the campus, as well as being able to use the vast array of multi-media conference facilities.
15 Apr 13. Boeing and Alabama leaders officially opened a new complex in Huntsville that will advance Boeing’s competitiveness and strengthen the company’s commitment to the state. Boeing is the largest aerospace company in Alabama and one of the state’s largest employers. Huntsville employees in leased facilities have begun moving into the first completed building of the Redstone Gateway complex, which is expected to house 1,400 Boeing employees in 363,000 square feet of space. The complex will be used for Boeing’s work on NASA’s Space Launch System and headquarters for the company’s Strategic Missile and Defense Systems division. (Source: Yahoo!/PRNewswire)
15 Apr 13. Tenth Anniversary for Eurofighter Support Centre. A unique support centre set up to offer an unrivalled service package for the Eurofighter Typhoon marked its 10th anniversary this spring. The International Weapon System Support Centre (IWSSC), based at Hallbergmoos/Munich opened for business in March 2003 shortly before Eurofighter Typhoon entered into service. The Centre provides and undertakes technical In-Service Support for all Eurofighter Typhoon Weapon System products. Its commissioning marked the first formal operational step in establishing what has now become widely recognised as world-class support for the multi-role/swing-role combat aircraft and the international customer-base it now services. Key to its success has been the development of a close working relationship between Eurofighter’s customers and the industrial base that supports them. A face-to-face approach to problem solving, strong links with national support centres for Eurofighter, and the use of ‘common tools’ to create synergies and facilitate information sharing have all helped make the IWSSC a potent and efficient support organisation. Today, through this teamwork, the Centre helps support the effective operation of over 350 aircraft spread across six nations with about 170,000 flying hours between them.
16 Apr 13. Airbus, with the support of EADS Innovation Works, has opened the first “stealthy building” at the Toulouse Airbus site attached to Blagnac Airport. EADS and Airbus built the C65 hangar at the airport by equipping the building with specially shaped aluminium panels. These panels prevent the building from disrupting the airport’s Instrument Landing System (ILS), which allows aircraft to land in reduced visibility conditions. For safety reasons, planning permission would not have been granted for the building without these modifications. The large façades of buildings pose a problem for aircraft landing systems as they reflect incoming radio waves across the runway, much like a mirror. Such perturbations would cause aircraft to deviate from the runway centreline. For this reason construction is forbidden close to runways unless it can be demonstrated that the building is ‘stealthy’. However, it is not feasible to apply conventional stealth technology to absorb the incoming waves since this would be prohibitively expensive. Instead the solution applied in Toulouse uses the phenomenon of diffraction to redirect the waves away from the runway. This is the same effect that produces the iridescent colours that are visible when holding up a compact disc up to a source of light. By employing ELISE, an advanced ILS simulation tool developed by Airbus Engineering, EADS Innovation Works and the French Civil Aviation