New Science & Technology

AEROINDIA 2009, BANGALORE DAY 5 FEBRUARY 15, 2009

2009-03-08T21:43:00.000-07:00

Curtains down on Aero-India Show

Bangalore: The signature manoeuvres of the Surya Kiran and the Sarang teams enthralled thousands of spectators below and marked the last day of Aero India 2009. After five days of business meetings and several rounds of aerobatics by combat aircraft, the largest event in the Indian defence sector drew its curtains down until the next Aero India two years later.
The five-day show saw the largest number of business and other visitors ever in any Aero India event -- a 30,000 increase in both categories. There were over 500 domestic and aviation companies plus all the big names from the aviation sector. The first three days saw hectic business meetings, deals that will culminate in the weeks and months to come.
Combat aircraft from major contenders for the Indian Air Force's requirement of 126 fighter jets stole the show, with every company vying for India's attention. The Eurofighter Typhoon, participating for the first time, wowed the crowd, so did the F-16 and F-18, LCA Tejas, Sukhoi 30 MKI and others.
To give the show its glamour quotient was present Ratan Tata on the first day, although he did not fly this time. This year, Olympics star Abhinav Bindra, India's first astronaut Rakesh Sharma, and MP Naveen Jindal flew the F-16. Journalist Suman Sharma became the first Indian woman to fly both the F-16 and the MiG-35.
Towards evening, after Aero India 2009 ended, many eyes were still glued to the sky and people clicked more pictures. The roar of the Sukhoi-30 and MiG-35 and dozens of other aircraft from across the globe, was hard to shake off.
16/02/09 Times of India

Aero India ends with a blast

A tyre burst on the concluding day of Aero India 2009 dented the image of an otherwise precision air show which spectacular air display for five days. Both the rear tyres of the Lockheed Martin F-16 IN Super Viper burst on Sunday afternoon while landing after a regular sortie.
The ill-fated two-seater aircraft was the same which India’s sole Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra co-piloted on the second day of the air show. This incident came as a major embarrassment for Lockheed Martin which is pitting the F-16 against six other international companies to bag the IAF’s 126 Multi-Role Combat Aircraft contract.
However, the Lockheed Martin put up a brave face by stating, “The tyres were changed within 30 minutes which is a perfect example of this aircraft’s maintainability.
The IAF show safety coordinators were very impressed with the rapidity with which the tyres were changed,” officials claimed.
Five days of breathtaking air display by the world’s most lethal war birds came to an end as dusk settled over the Yelahanka Air Force base on Sunday bringing down curtains on the Aero India 2009.
Over two lakh visitors attended the show which includes fifty thousand business visitors alone, exceeding the projection at the start of the show. Terming the five-day show as a grand success, organisers said the defence industries were set to get a boost. Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) Deputy Director General Gurpal Singh said that 588 business-to-business (b2b) meetings took place under the umbrella of CII. These include 350 between Indian and foreign companies and the remaining between Indian business houses. The newly- introduced software, enabling online registration and enhancing business propositions among companies worldwide, proved a huge success during the show as about 600 meeting were held.
He added that the highlight of the event was the raising of Rs 7.15 crore as venture capital through business and promoting components. In total 303 companies from overseas and 289 from India participated in the air show.
16/02/09 ExpressBuzz

Sales pitch by global biggies, 'desi' companies mark Aero India

Bangalore: The five-day Aero India 2009, during which Global aviation majors and national firms displayed flying prowess of their machines, concluded at the Yelahanka Airbase here on Sunday.
Tens of thousands of aviation enthusiasts turned up to watch "magnificent flying metal birds", especially on the last two days when the show was open for public, as a slew of MoUs and agreements were signed during the event organised by the Ministry of Defence and managed by the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Agustawestland, a Finmeccanica company, and Tata Sons inked an MoU for formation of an Indian joint-venture company which would establish a final assembly line for manufacture of AW-119 helicopters in India.
Also, Tata Advanced Materials Ltd (TAML), a Tata Group Company, and global firm Saab signed a business agreement for manufacture of structural composite components. In sharp focus were six companies -- Lockheed Martin and Boeing from the United States, Russia's MiG, which is part of the 'UAC,' France's Dassault, Sweden's Saab and the EADS consortium of British, German, Spanish and Italian companies -- who are in race for a Rs 40,000-Rs 45,000 crore contract to supply 126 fighter jets to India.
15/02/09 PTI/The Hindu

Reaching for the skies

Bangalore: Focus India—that is the mantra for the global aerospace and defence industry as the country goes on a buying binge to modernize its military.
The world’s third largest arms importer is expected to spend nearly $ 100 billion, or Rs4.87 trillion, by 2017 to buy fighter planes, utility and attack helicopters, spy planes and own satellites in space. Despite a home-grown aerospace and defence industry, India still imports nearly 70% of its needs, defence minister A.K. Antony said on Monday.
The shopping list includes 126 fighter planes, estimated to cost at least Rs42,000 crore—the world’s biggest tender—nearly 197 helicopters for its army, an additional 57 Hawk trainers to train its pilots, tanker aeroplanes that will refuel fighters in mid-air and allow pilots to fly on long-distance sorties.
Nearly 592 exhibitors, including 303 from 25 countries, will take part in the five-day event which, besides frontline aircraft, will also see vendors selling components and systems to India’s home-grown aerospace industry.
11/02/09 K Raghu/Livemint

Flight of fantasy takes wheels at Aero India

Bangalore: A speeding Formula SAE car in an air show amidst the best fighter aircraft is indeed an unfamiliar sight.
But, that was what the large crowd that had come to the Aero India 2009 venue got to see, a maroon Formula car speeding between two barricades at the display area on Sunday.
The Formula car PM408 built by Team HAYA, a group of automobile enthusiasts from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of People’s Education Society Institute of Technology (PESIT), is the first-ever race car to be displayed in the air show.
The PM408 which was on static display for the first four days of the air show in one of the exhibition halls had a slew of visitors which included Tata Chairman Ratan Tata, who apart from interacting with the students also gave them a few tips on how they can improve their performance in the upcoming FSAE ITALY 2009, in which they will taking part.
Team HAYA which was to take part in the elite Formula Society of Automotive Engineers (FSAE)-Australasia competition, held in November last year, could not do so due to technical snags.
“That failure was one of the main reasons why we brought the car to Aero India, where most of the visitors have an expertise in technology and we wanted to get their views,” he said.
“The car’s highlight is the custommade automatic button shift for fast and efficient transmission, all of which make PM409, the first-of-itskind in this part of the world. The car is to touch around 200 kmph with an acceleration of 0-100 kmph in less than 3.5 seconds,” Bafna added.
16/02/09 ExpressBuzz

RADA's Navigation Systems Debut at Aero-India

Israel's avionics specialist, RADA Electronic Industries Ltd., is unveiling its latest line of Inertial Navigation Systems at Aero-India: high precision, yet affordable systems designed for airborne, unmanned and expendable applications.
RADA's range of INS on display at Aero-India 2009 includes:
• R-100F: Fiber Optic Gyro (FOG)-Based system
• R-200M: Compact, MEMS-Based, multiple-sensor aided INS
• MAVINS: Modular, All-in-One Avionics and MEMS-Based INS
RADA's navigation-grade, Embedded GPS-INS (EGI) R-100F solutions are applicable to new systems, retrofit and upgrade of aging platforms, replacing mechanical-gyro based units with modern, highly efficient and reliable FOG based solutions. The R-200M and MAVINS compact systems are uniquely built for integration into Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and disposable applications.
RADA's navigation solutions introduce sophisticated and unique sensor fusion algorithms, embedding modular design principles for seamless integration into larger mission systems.
RADA’s avionics solutions and expertise are offered to and adapted by leading air forces and aerospace prime integrators worldwide, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Electric, HAL, Embraer, IAI, Rafael and many others.
15/02/09 defpro.com

F-16 tyre burst on landing during air show in Bangalore, none injured

Bangalore: A tyre of an F-16N Super Viper fighter aircraft of the global defence and aerospace major Lockheed Martin burst on landing during the final day of the Aero India 2009 air show at Yelahanka Airbase today."No one was injured," Lockheed Martin said in a statement.
"The tyre was changed within 30 minutes, which is a perfect example of this aircraft's maintainability," the company said.
The statement said the Air Force show safety coordinators were "very impressed with the rapidity with which the tyre was changed".
15/02/09 Press Trust of India

AEROINDIA 2009, BANGALORE DAY 4 FEBRUARY 14, 2009

2009-03-08T21:41:00.000-07:00

Could the Aero India F-16s bomb India in a war?

Bangalore: As the F-16 fighter roars into the skies of Bengaluru at the Aero India 09 show, all attention is on the wonderful aerobatics display it puts up, not on the tiny flag of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on its tail. But the fact is, two of the four F-16s brought here by Lockheed Martin belong to the UAE Air Force.
Two intriguing questions immediately arise: Firstly, were these aircraft flown, perhaps just days ago, by combat pilots from the Pakistani Air Force (PAF), which has long sent its officers on deputation to fly UAE fighters? Would these very aircraft, now here on a sales pitch by Lockheed Martin, have been bombing India in the event of a war with Pakistan?
Senior Indian Air Force (IAF) officers have confirmed to Business Standard that, in any war with India, Pakistan could field up to two squadrons of F-16 aircraft borrowed from Arab nations, where its pilots are posted on deputation.
Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, who won a Vir Chakra in combat in 1971 and went on to head the Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, points out, “This has happened regularly. In 1965, the Jordanian Air Force supplied F-104 Starfighters to Pakistan, one of which was even shot down by the IAF. In 1971, Turkey and Iran had supplied F-86 Sabres to the PAF. I wouldn’t rule out a repeat of this kind of help.”
Air Marshal Vinod Patney, the top air force field commander during the Kargil conflict, also believes the UAE Air Force F-16s could be used against India.
He reasons, “There are Pakistani pilots there in the UAE: fact. They are flying their F-16s: fact. There is a close military relationship between those countries: fact. I would not rule out Islamic solidarity coming into play in the event of a war with India.”
Clearly visible on the UAE Air Force F-16s on display in Bangalore is an extra fuel tank, just above the wing, specially built for the batch of F-16s ordered by the UAE. The IAF believes UAE asked Lockheed Martin for the extra range to allow the Pakistani pilots in the UAE to reach Indian targets, deliver their weapons, and then fly to a Pakistani base from where they could operate for the rest of the war.
Lockheed Martin told Business Standard that they had no idea whether Pakistani pilots had recently flown the F-16s, now in Bangalore. Douglas Hartwick, CEO of Lockheed Martin India Pvt Ltd explained, “We just leased these planes from the UAE Air Force.”
India’s strategic community is concerned about F-16 aircraft being evaluated by India despite their being in service in Pakistan.
15/02/09 Ajai Shukla/Business Standard

I got no remuneration, says Sharma

Bangalore: The intense competition for IAF’s $ 10 billion Multi Medium Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) deal is getting intense with celebrities donning the air warrior robes. There are speculations on the guest pilots receiving remuneration from the bidders of the MMRCA.
A guest pilot, however, denied vehemently when confronted with this question on Friday.
India’s first cosmonaut Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma who flew the F/A 18 Super Hornet denied that guest pilots were bought by the bidding companies to fly the aircraft so that it would increase their brand value.
“Neither I nor my foundation have received any money to fly the aircraft,” said Sharma after his hour-long sortie. Sharma denied that there was any such deal and said he took the flight for his love of flying.
The contenders who are bidding for the MMRCA deal are leaving no stone unturned to grab the maximum attention by roping in celebrities from different walks of life.
The Russian MiG-35 roped in Air Marshal (Retd) Harish Masand and the Lockheed Martin F-16 IN Super Viper Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra to fly their respective aircraft in this edition of Aero India.
After strapping on, the 60-year-old former IAF officer saluted to the shutter bugs when asked to wave for the cameras. Sharma who did up to 6-Gs with US Air Force Pilot Daniel ‘Blue’ Hannum on the third day of Aero India 2009 said, “Usually you experience zero gravity, but in this flight it was 6-Gs, and it was more challenging because of my age,” he said.
14/02/09 ExpressBuzz

Navin Jindal rides F-18 during Bangalore air show

Bangalore: Congress MP and industrialist Navin Jindal today rode the US fighter plane F-18 during the ongoing air show, the sources said.
Jindal's wife Shaalu Jindal was also present during the air-sortie, She was immaculately dressed in a red dress on the occasion of Valentine's day.
The young industrialist dedicated the air sortie to his wife Shaalu Jindal. Two days back, Jindal had received the required training for the flying.
Earlier, ace shooter and Olympic gold medalist Abhinav Bindra had also taken a flight on F-16 fighter plane during the five-day air show where 25 countries are participating.
14/02/09 Samay Live

MBDA to tie-up with DRDO for short-range missile

Bangalore: After its recent success in selling its Milan-2T anti-tank guided missiles to the Indian Army, France-based MBDA is hoping to co-develop a short range surface-to-air missile (SR-SAM) with India.
"We are discussing the development of missiles with Indian agencies in this regard and are hoping for a positive outcome," MBDA spokesperson Mati Hindrekus told PTI at Aero India here.
DRDO had issued a global Request for Proposal (RFP) last year for developing a SR-SAM with range of over 15 kilometres.
If successful, MBDA would co-develop the new missile and launcher, "marrying" technology and capabilities of the European company and the DRDO, he said.Hindrekus said BDL would be the prime contractor and produce and integrate the weapon system. The choice of radar would be an Indian one, he said, adding that the missile would have range of over 15 kilometres.
MBDA is involved in the modernisation of the Indian Mirage 2000 fleet, which will upgrade the fighter's capabilities to fire the infrared and electromagnetic versions of the Mica air-to-air missile.
15/02/09 PTI/The Hindu

Love struck couples throng Aero India show

Bangalore : Thousands of love struck couples chose the high-security Aero India show for the Valentine Day celebrations as the venue was shorn of either"moral police"or saffron brigade to disturb them.
The Aero India 2009, into its fourth-day, drew more than 75,000 visitors, which included thousands of couples, who preferred this safe destination at Yelahanka Airforce base for walking hand-in-hand.
As the aircraft flew overhead, the lovers clung to each other, enjoying the display of aerobatic manoeuvres in a sanitised atmosphere with no threat of being caught by the"moral police".
14/02/09 Indopia

Spectacle in the air, chaos on the roads

Bangalore: Traffic snarls and irate tempers were on display on all roads leading to the Air Force Station at Yelahanka, that is playing host to Aero India 2009.
With the second Saturday turning out to be the first holiday for many since the commencement of the much publicised event, many Bangaloreans opted to make a “Family Day Out” event.
Not just visitors, even delegates had a tough time making their way into the fortified building. Air force authorities were engaged in the time-consuming but necessary task of subjecting all vehicles to stringent security checks at the entrance.
The cops in charge of regulating traffic appeared totally out of control. Many visitors were engaged in angry verbal exchanges with cops. Many with valid entry passes or tickets to the show were not permitted entry by the cops on the grounds that parking space inside the station was full. Some visitors who entered the ground and later ventured out for a break, were taken aback when they tried to get inside again. The fact that the ticket issued was valid for a single entry only, was something many did not know about.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic and Security) Praveen Sood said: “Traffic movement to the airshow was smooth and without any hitch. We had issued advisories to the public visiting the show through the media on parking instructions well in advance.”
Cars have been given park space at “Venkatala” near the venue, from where the BMTC’s Volvo buses ferry visitors to the entrance, he added. “Problems and confusion arise as people have not read or were unaware of the instructions we have issued.
15/0209 Deccan Herald

Rosoboronexport offering Indian Partner full military hardware

Summing up and announcing the winner of a tender to supply 126 multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) to the Indian Air Force (IAF) will be one of the high points in military-technical cooperation between India and foreign countries in the coming one or two years.
The tender involves six contenders: Russian MiG-35 fighter (RSK MiG), American F-16 and F/A-18 (from Lockheed Martin and Boeing respectively), French Rafale (Dassault Aviation), Swedish JAS-39 Gripen (SAAB), and European Eurofighter Typhoon (EADS). The technical evaluation of the bids has been completed, and field trials are to start in India in April-May.
The Russian fighter offers distinct advantages over the competing planes. Unlike all the other aircraft, which are production models, the MiG-35 is the latest-generation fighter developed with due regard to the peculiarities of operation in India. It not only meets all the requirements of the tender put forward by the IAF, but also has drawn from the best operating experience with previous MiG aircraft in the country.
The Russian aircraft has perfect aerodynamic lines and what is more it has acquired incredible super maneuverability, owing to an exclusive thrust vector control technology. None of MiG-35’s rivals can boast such capability, which gives it an undeniable edge in real air combat. Furthermore, heavy use of composites in the frame has made the aircraft less observable to enemy radars. The fighter’s double weapons load and 1.5-fold higher fuel capacity compared to its predecessor are also its irresistible benefits.
The Zhuk-AE active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar is a unique component of the MiG-35, which was proposed for the tender by Rosoboronexport and MiG Russian Aircraft Corporation. The radar can track up to 30 targets and attack simultaneously six most dangerous of them. Its target detection range of 140-160 km also wins admiration and can be further extended to 250-280 km when more receive/transmit modules are used. Along with its powerful precision-guided weapons, high-performance active self-defense system and superb performance characteristics, the lightweight MiG-35 has grown into a medium-sized aircraft – a superfighter of the 21st century.
Another benefit of the Russian fighter is its best value for money. Being highly competitive with its Western counterparts, the MiG-35 is superior to its rivals in many characteristics and at same time is less expensive. For India, this factor may be decisive in selecting the winner, all other things being equal. On the world arms markets, where Rosoboronexport has operated in recent years, the cost-performance ratio favorably distinguishes Russian military equipment from rivals.
More than 40 years of military-technical cooperation between Russia and India and the current level of the mutually beneficial bilateral relations are indicative of this.
The recent major projects being implemented between Moscow and Delhi include delivery of Mi-17V-5 transport helicopters to India, license production of Su-30MKI aircraft and T-90S tanks.
A qualitatively new phase of fruitful bilateral cooperation is marked by the key joint aircraft projects. These are primarily the multi-purpose transport plane and a fifth-generation fighter development programs
“This year’s 7th AERO INDIA 2009 exhibition is a grandiose aerospace event in the Asia & Pacific region. It involves 20 Russian exhibitors presenting several hundreds of weaponry, military and aerospace equipment items,” said Viktor Komardin, head of Rosoboronexport’s delegation and Deputy Director General of the Corporation. “The content and dimensions of Rosoboronexport’s display, planned meetings and negotiations will be focused on further strengthening Russia’s military-technical cooperation with its long and reliable partners as well as on looking for new would-be purchasers of aircraft and armaments made by Russia independently or jointly with foreign partners in production.
14/02/09 defpro.com, Germany

Bird Group expands presence MRO services

Bangalore: Bird Air Services Pvt. Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bird Group, recently signed a comprehensive marketing agreement with Pacific Propeller Intl. (PPI), a global repair and overhaul services provider to several regional airline and military aircraft. The agreement was signed by Ankur Bhatia, Executive Director, Bird Group; Jeff Heikke, President, PPI and Jim Roosevelt, Regional Director Asia Pacific of M/s Pacific Propeller at Aero India 2009, Bangalore.
Under the agreement, PPI will provide its services and products through Bird Air Services Pvt. Ltd. within the Indian Subcontinent. It will also help facilitate Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) services for propeller based engines for aircraft in India at PPI prop shops. It is estimated that of the total airline expenditure, aircraft operators spend almost 13 per cent on aircraft maintenance and servicing. According to a recent report by Ernst and Young on the Indian aviation sector, MRO spending in India is estimated to rise from USD 440 million in 2007 to USD 1.2 billion in 2017, exhibiting an annual growth of 11.8 per cent.
15/02/09 TravelBizMonitor

Malaysian firm thrives on Valentine's Day at air show

Bangalore: A Malaysian garment firm made hay Saturday at Aero India international air-show by selling designer T-shirts, caps, fighter aircraft models and a variety of novelties to celebrate Valentine's Day in a special way.
'We are giving one product free for every purchase made to celebrate Valentine's Day in our own way.
The response has been overwhelming, with lots of couples and teenagers snapping up our attractive offering,' V-GRO Marketing official M.O. Yap told IANS at the Yelahanka air force base, about 20 km from this tech hub.
The Kuala Lumpur-based V-GRO has set up shop outside an international pavilion to sell its products during the five-day biennial event. It has decided to offer free any one item purchased to mark the lovers' day.
'We participate in air shows that are held in Singapore, Dubai, Paris, London and Bangalore to showcase and market our readymade garments, caps, tiny aircraft models, key chains and pins in the shape of fighter jets and choppers,' Yap said.
Posters with Valentine's Day Offer written in pink around the stall attracted a steady stream of visitors to the stall during the show, leading to brisk sales by the afternoon.
The assorted products, including T-shirts, caps, aircraft models, key chains and shirt badges (in the shape of fighter jets on display at the air show) were priced between Rs.350 and Rs.1,800.
'As the day progressed, sales picked up, with many couples or singles buying a T-shirt, a cap or a badge. Our 'buy-one-take-one-free' offer was appreciated and evoked warm response from the younger visitors,' Yap affirmed.
14/02/09 IANS/SmasHits.com

Israeli holography show a big hit with visitors

Bangalore: The visitors at Aero India 2009 were enthralled after witnessing a virtual battlefield that looked straight out of a Hollywood sci-fi flick.
The show that was directed and produced by Nissan Belkin, general manager of Telemedia Co- Israel, showcases military equipment and their uses, including battle field management, integrated infantry combat system, robotic systems, laser systems, thermal imaging, head- up displays, stabilised payloads and communication systems.
Nissan said that the show was conceived to display the capabilities of Elbit systems. “It is a unique way of grabbing attention and nothing can explain avionics better,” he said.
A visitor said that, “At least thirty people gather around every time the show starts and when it is done, they are still there.” Defence equipment, gear, addons were all there but what really hooked the visitors was the holographic projection of combat environment as seen from a cockpit displaying some of the most advanced war equipment in a virtual environment.
Many science fiction movies have had holograms as plot devices, especially futuristic uses of them. Case in point is Arnold Schwarzenegger starrer ‘Total Recall’, in which the hologram is put to use by the protagonist by creating a second image of himself. Holography also finds application in the fields of data storage, security, art, dynamic holography and cubic dimensions.
14/02/09 Jayadevan P K/ExpressBuzz

AEROINDIA 2009, BANGALORE DAY 3 FEBRUARY 13, 2009

2009-03-08T21:38:00.000-07:00

Cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma back in space; flies in Super Hornet

Bangalore: Twenty-five years after his tryst with fame, India's only cosmonaut to fly in space, Rakesh Sharma, was in the limelight once again when he flew in Boeing-made FA-18 Super Homet at Asia's premier airshow, the Aero India 2009, here today.
Sharma, who was 35 when he embarked on the space journey in 1984, said, "It was exciting to get back to what I like most -- escaping gravity." Sharma, who retired as wing commander from the Indian Air Force, had a nearly one hour sortie as a part of the programme by Boeing, which had bid for the IAF medium multirole combat aircraft deal.
Dressed in the pilot overhauls, the squadron leader looked completely at ease as he took off in the aircraft with US co-pilot Hanmann.
Sharma, who did some manoeuvres including, some rolls and tumbles and loops, said it still felt good when coming back to earth. Sharma's flight on the Super Hornet comes close on the heels of Olympic champion Abhinav Bindra who flew Lockheed Martin's F-16 yesterday, another contender for the tender.
13/02/09 Press Trust of India

Suman first woman to fly MiG-35

Bangalore : Like it or not, Suman Sharma, who was the first civilian woman to fly the F-16IN Super-Viper also became the first woman in the world to fly the MiG-35, just minutes after Rakesh Sharma flew the F-18 Super Hornet on Friday at the Yelahanka air base as part of Aero India 2009.
MiG Aircrafts head Mikhail Globenko told TOI: "She is the first woman to fly on the MiG-35. Two reasons convinced us to fly her -- this aircraft is extremely safe and MiG pilots are remarkable. We knew she would be in a safe aircraft and in safe hands. We showed that in 2007 display too. And then we found she was brave, physically fit and ready to take the flight. We have in fact invited her for the Moscow air show in August."
Suman's flight comes in the context of Russian air force not having women fighter pilots at the moment and Russian women not having flown the aircraft. Interestingly, the flight happened on Friday the 13th. "It is a coincidence that we flew her on a military aircraft when we don't have women fighter pilots."
In the rush of personalities that this aero show has seen, Suman who first flew the F-16IN was followed by Abhinav Bindra on the F-16IN and Rakesh Sharma on the F-18. Now Suman herself was back again but this time on the MiG-35.
Suman said MiG authorities were convinced that she could fly as co-pilot and take the gravitational pull as she had already experienced the flight on the F-16 IN. "It was a 42-minute ride and was exciting. We did 20,000 feet at 0.9 mach. The pilot was conversing with me in English and asked me how I felt throughout."
Suman and her pilot did the side rolls and the 360 degree turns and high angle of attack for the manouvres and pulled 7G which has been the highest in this personality-driven flights. "I think the MiG 35 is about power -- tremendous power. You can feel it in flight. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that it is twin engine. The stability and agility seemed remarkable with all the weight."
14/02/09 Prashanth G N/Times of India

Lockheed Martin grabs focus at air show

American defence major Lockheed Martin (LM) has been putting up its best show at the ongoing air show at the Yelahanka air base, hoping the Indian defence sector will lap up its products.
Among other attention-grabbing engagements were Olympic gold medallist Abhinav Bindra, who flew the F-16N Super Viper advanced fourth generation combat aircraft, one of the star attractions at the air show that concludes this Sunday. Other products from the LM labs include the C-130J Hercules airlifter (where media has been taken for a short plane ride on Thursday and Friday) and air and missile defence systems.
Orville Prins, vice president of business development (India), said the F-16 that sparkled over the Bangalore blue skies is tailored to meet or exceed India's Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) requirements. "The Super Viper is ready for integration into India's infrastructure and operations now," he added, hoping to grab a share of India's mighty $12 billion budget for buying nearly 100-odd fighter aircraft. The LM official said that 24 nations have chosen the F-16 as their front-line multi-role fighter with 52 follow-on buys making it one the most successful multi-role fighter aircraft programmes.
The Americans are happy that the Indian Air Force has selected the C-130J airlifter, with six aircraft to be delivered beginning in 2011. The IAF's new Super Hercules will be the longer fuselage or "stretched" variant of the C-130J just like the ones given to US Air Force. This airlifter can carry in technical terms eight 463L pallets, 97 medical litters, 24 CDS bundles, 128 combat troops and 92 paratroops.
13/02/09 Stephen David/India Today

Controlling the flights: the Air Force way

The Aero India 09 continues to draw large crowds as it enters into its third day. Even more footfalls are expected in the remaining two days that coincide with the weekend. Aerial displays in the morning and afternoon sessions are as spectacular and breathtaking as in any major air show held worldwide. Even while much of the focus remains on the magnificent flying machines and the daredevil pilots, the singular edifice that facilitates and coordinates all the flying activity – the Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower can be aptly described the heart of the air show.
At the ATC of the Yelahanka airbase of the Indian Air Force (IAF) frenetic activities begin much before dawn-break, continuing well beyond dusk. Handling over 60,000 movements annually and with two major airfields - Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL) and the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) airport in the near vicinity, the airfield is among the busiest military airfields in the country. The task for the Chief Operations Officer (COO), Wing Commander NVM Unnithan and other officers manning the ATC remains a huge responsibility. With the world focus on the airbase at the biennial air show the professional air warriors have left nothing to chance.
Bristling with activities, a 24x7 manned 'Base Operations Room' controlling all aspects of the flying and coordinating with various agencies including 'flying display director', routine movements, VIP protocol, ground handling agencies, BIAL, HAL remains fully operational at the ATC tower.
While an anxious F-16 pilot, Lieutenant Mike Benson of the USAF, coordinating the flight schedule of the C-130 Hercules was happy after the arrangements were explained by the COO, Captain Uphoff and Liutenant Michael Schumacher of the German Air Force's Fighter Wing-73, technical team members of the Eurofighter Typhoon dropped by to thank the officials at the ATC, a gesture symbolic of the universal espirit-de-corps of airmen exemplified at the air show.
Preparations began six months in advance according to Wing Commander Unnithan and coordination meetings were crucial as Aero India 09 was the first air show since the opening of BIAL last year. With the lateral separation between Yelahanka and BIAL airfields being just 4.3 nautical miles it was imperative to halt all civilian flights during the air displays. There was full cooperation extended by BIAL informed Wing Commander Unnithan and the flight displays are going perfect as expected, he added.
Among the significant aspects in the preparations included the improvement in airfield infrastructure and other work services. The resurfacing of the complete taxi-track, airfield links, refitting of the runway lighting, drainage of the 8,500 feet long runway was completed in just four months ahead of the show informed Senior ATC Officer, Wing Commander Sunil Ninan.
Seated on the console panels in a glass-encased environment, the cool demeanour of the five ATC officers manning the consoles betray little of the highly stressful role the controllers undergo. Not without reason does a banner display - 'You are about to witness the most stressful profession in the world' as one takes the flight of stairs leading to the ATC tower. Significantly while there are so many pilots from different countries, speaking in different accents, the articulate ATC controllers are equally adept at picking up the nuances, ensuring two-way communication between the pilots and ATC remains unambiguous and crystal clear.
Flight safety aspects remain paramount, as the spectre of bird-hits cannot be ruled out leading to catastrophic consequences. In an effort to restrict the bird activity especially during the flying displays that are flown at low-levels, adequate aerial surveys were done in the period leading to the air show. Ten 'bird scare' teams on specially procured silent 'e-bikes' continue to prowl with double-barrel guns in the airfield area. In addition, introduction of 'whistlers' a pyro-technique device emitting high frequency, high-pitch sound that irritate the birds are being effectively used. Closure of the fish and poultry markets in the near vicinity on specified days and covering the water bodies with nets are some of the other initiatives undertaken by the IAF officials of the airbase.
The meteorological forecasts during the air show got a boost with the installation of a 'Numerical Weather Prediction Module' enabling 24-hours observation watch, and 18-hours forecast watch, informed Wing Commander VK Choudhary, senior Met Officer at the base. With weather being the best at this time of the year, Aero India shows are most appropriate in February, he added.
13/02/09 Press Information Bureau

Agustawestland, Tata Sons sign MoU to form JV for AW-119 helicopter

Bangalore: Agustawestland, a Finmeccanica company and Tata Sons announced signing of a Memorandum of Understanding for forming an Indian Joint Venture company which will establish a final assembly line for the AW-119 helicopter in India.
The agreement was signed at the Aero India 2009 air show here by Giuseppe Orsi, CEO, AgustaWestland and Ratan Tata, Chairman of Tata Sons.
The JV company will be responsible for the AW-119 final assembly, completion and delivery to customers worldwide, while AugustaWestland would retain responsibility for worldwide marketing and sales.
The first aircraft is scheduled to be delivered from the new facility in 2011, with production forecast to rise to 30 aircraft per year to meet worldwide demand, an AgustaWestland statement said.
13/02/09 PTI/Deccan Herald

India to test new Agni missile by Dec 2010

Bangalore: The chief of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) M. Natarajan today announced that India would test a new version of the Agni series of missiles.
This would be an intermediate range missile that could traverse about 5,500 km. This would be called the Agni-V and would be tested by end of 2010, Natarajan told reporters at the Aero India show here this morning.
Detailing the DRDO plans he said it could develop a medium range combat fighter to follow the light combat aircraft fighter.
On missiles India lags behind China that has in its possession a large number of Inter-continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) capable of reaching targets beyond 10,000 km. In sharp contrast, the most powerful ballistic missile in India’s possession is the Agni-III, designed to reach a target at a distance of 3,000 km, this was successfully fired last May and is ready for induction.
The government has not considered an 8,000-km range ICBM. Agni-V is likely to have solid propellants.
13/02/09 Ajay Banerjee/The Tribune

IAF to have its own eye in space

Bangalore: With a view to increasing its surveillance capabilities, Indian Air Force is going to have its own satellite in space by the end of 2010.
"We will launch our satellite by the end of 2010," IAF chief Air Chief Marshal Fali Homi Major said here yesterday.
The satellite to be launched by ISRO next year will be a dual-use satellite and will be used for civilian purposes also. It will help the IAF to position its aerial and ground assets and targets. It would be used to gather navigational information.
In the recent past, IAF has been working closely to develop its space-based capabilities. It even has plans of setting up an Aerospace command under it but it has faced opposition from the other two services over the issue.
Its southern command based in Thiruvananthapuram works closely with ISRO in space related areas. At the air headquarters also, one Air Vice Marshal rank officer looks after space operations.
13/02/09 Press Trust of India/NDTV.com

Maiden flight of India's supersonic trainer in two months

Bangalore: India would fly its indigenously built supersonic light combat aircraft trainer --Tejas -- in two months for the first time, a senior defence official said here today.
It would be a general purpose dedicated trainer aircraft, Scientific Advisor to Defence Minister and Chief of Defence Research and Development Organisation, M Natarajan, told reporters.
This trainer is going to be "far, far superior to Hawk in five-six years," he claimed.
Hawk is the country's present advanced jet trainer aircraft.
Asked about the long-range Agni missile, he said "efforts are on".DRDO is working towards capitalising on the work done in the first and second stages and trying to intelligently repackage both stages by reducing the inter-stage distance and gain that much space for pushing a third motor. These are not simple tasks, he said.
13/02/09 Samay Live

IAF to achieve 34 fighter squadron strength by 2017

Dismissing the need to put any plans on fast track after 26/11, the Indian Air Force (IAF) Chief, Air Chief Marshal Fali H Major said that IAF did not have to do so as the force structuring and weapons catered to all spectrum of needs. The IAF needs the best and is on a large-scale modernization drive. This is being backed with very good government support told the Air Chief speaking to media on the sidelines of the ongoing Aero India 09, at Yehalanka, Bengaluru, today. A lot of hard work within the IAF and with aviation-related agencies from within the country and vendors from other countries is on towards the modernization process, he added.
"Economically the defence-related industries, specially the aerospace industries, both civil and military will continue to bloom', he told commenting on the successful start of the Aero India 09 that got underway on Wednesday. Replying to a query whether with the phasing-out of the Mig-25 the IAF reconnaissance needs were affected, the Air Chief clarified that the role of ISR (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) was a part and parcel of any Air Force and that the IAF has it. He also stated that there are better and efficient ways of getting ISR.
He also informed that the uses of UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) are going to increase and IAF is in the process of expanding its UAV fleet. Regarding the declining fighter squadron strength the Air Chief stated that gestation period to acquire aircraft and missile systems is much more than any other weapon platform. However without losing the combat edge against likely adversaries the squadron strength envisaged by 2017 is 34 squadrons and the remaining strength to be achieved by 2020.
13/02/09 Press Information Bureau/Equitybulls

Embraer promotes defense solutions at the event

Embraer and the Indian Government signed a comprehensive deal for three EMB-145 AEW&C (Airborne Early Warning & Control) jets, in July 2008, that includes training, technical support, spare parts, and ground support equipment. These aircraft will receive the advanced electronic systems currently under development by India’s Defence Research & Development Organization (DRDO). The first delivery is scheduled for 2011, joining four Legacy 600 jets in operation by the Indian Air Force (IAF), which are used to transport Indian VIPs and foreign dignitaries. A fifth Legacy 600 belongs to the Border Security Force (BSF), under India’s Home Ministry. The EMB-145 AEW&C is part of the Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) family, which also includes the EMB-145 RS/AGS (Remote Sensing/Air-to-Ground Surveillance) and the EMB-145 MP (Maritime Patrol).
As it completes the 40th year from its founding, Embraer has a strong presence in the Indian market, dealing with both the national government and private companies. Besides the Indian government, the Company has other important customers in the country. Among them are Aviators India Pvt. Ltd., which is the first Phenom executive jet customer in the region and bought two Phenom 100 jets, and Invision Projects Pvt. Ltd., which holds the largest order for Phenom 100 and Phenom 300 jets in India. To support the operations of the growing number of Phenom and Legacy 600 customers in the country, the Company recently chose Indamer Company Pvt. Ltd. to be an authorized service center. In the commercial aviation segment, Embraer provides airplanes to Paramount Airways, the launch customer of the E-Jets in the country, and to Star Aviation, which soon will receive its first E-Jet out of a firm order of seven EMBRAER 170s".
13/02/09 AvioNews

Irkut awarded for SU-30MKI Program

At the Aero India 2009 international air show and exhibition FORCE magazine presented the award to Irkut Corporation, prime contractor and coordinator of the Su-30 program, acknowledged as the best program of India’s military-technical cooperation with foreign countries in combat aviation.
JSC Sukhoi Company CEO Mikhail Pogosyan received the award on behalf of Sukhoi Design Bureau for the Su-30MKI design and development.
FORCE also recognized the personal contribution of Alexey Fedorov, President of JSC United Aircraft Corporation to Indo-Russian military-technical cooperation within the scope of the Su-30MKI project.
At the ceremony the awards were presented by Prawin Sawhney, editor-in-chief of the FORCE magazine that specializes in covering national security and defense issues.
According to a massive study conducted by experts from this respected Indian publication the Su-30MKI program is the most successful in the history of India’s military-technical cooperation with foreign countries, with the aircraft considered one of the top multi-role fighters in the world. The research authors highlight that the Su-30MKI became the first serially produced combat aircraft in the world to feature super-maneuverability conferred by the ultimate aerodynamic layout and TVC engines. A particular appreciation was expressed towards the onboard avionics suite with ESA radar to be the first fitted onto the exported fighter aircraft.
The specialists emphasize the fact that the Su-30MKI is the first combat machine developed outside India in accordance with the strict IAF requirements and produced in cooperation with Indian industry.
Irkut Corporation delivered to India over 100 aircraft and technological kits for their license production by Hindustan Aeronautics ltd.
13/02/09 defpro, Germany

First defence fund launched at Aero India

Bangalore: Top defence decision-makers at the Aero India 2009 show in Bangalore have declared repeatedly that the economic slowdown would not impact defence spending, which would continue to rise in absolute terms. Today, India’s first 100 per cent defence-oriented investment fund — named the India Rizing Fund — announced its official launch at this biennial air expo.
The India Rizing Fund is a Rs 750 crore venture capital fund, approved by Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) for investing in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) engaged in producing defence equipment. The Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) has approved raising Rs 550 crore from international investors; the fund expects to raise Rs 200 crore from the domestic market.
Rajesh Narayan, the Managing Trustee of the India Rizing Fund explains why, despite depressed economic conditions, he expects the fund to post strong gains. “There is, first of all, strong government encouragement for privatising defence production to the greatest extent possible. This means growing business for private companies, as defence PSUs and Ordnance Factories outsource production to them.”
“In addition, India’s new offset rules demand that foreign defence majors supplying arms to India will have to source defence goods from India, to the tune of 30-50 per cent of the overall contract value. Already, a string of global majors are in talks with Indian defence SMEs for fulfiling those offset obligations.”
Global majors’ offset obligations are expected to amount to about $20 billion over the coming ten years. Just one contract — the procurement of 126 medium multirole combat aircraft (MMRCA)— will generate offset obligations worth an estimated $6 billion.
The India Rizing Fund is in talks with several global majors, who have a strategic and commercial interest in strengthening the network of SMEs, so that their offset obligations can be fulfiled without difficulty.
14/02/09 Ajai Shukla/Business Standard

HAL to deliver 260-270 ALHs for Rs 16,000 cr

Bangalore: Hindustan Aeronautics Limited has orders to deliver 260 to 270 Advanced Light Helicopters (ALH), christened Dhruv, worth Rs 16,000 crore, its Chairman Ashok Baweja said on Thursday.
He told reporters at the Aero India 2009 that the Bangalore-headquartered defence PSU has an overall order book position in excess of Rs 50,000 crore.
The Union Cabinet has just approved HAL's Light Utility Helicopter project. This helicopter would be of three tonne class,he said.
HAL has bagged an order to deliver three Chetak helicopters to Surinam.
HAL would take up development of Light Combat Aircraft Mark II - which would be a new aircraft - once it delivers 40 units of LCA Mark I - eight limited series production, 20 fighters and 12 trainers.
12/02/09 PTI/Economic Times

AEROINDIA 2009, BANGALORE DAY 2 FEBRUARY 12, 2009

2009-03-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

Antonov presents a new version of AN-74 in India

For the first time the programme of AN-74 new multi-role maritime patrol aircraft will be represented to a wide aviation community. At present, this version of the aircraft is being studied by experts of MoD of India within the frame of tender on delivery of 6 aircraft of such a class for Navy and Coast Guard of the country. The new AN-74 is prepared to fulfill with a high efficiency a wide spectrum of military tasks including: aerial and maritime patrolling, support of military ships with the possibility to counteract to an enemy, carrying out search and rescue operations; electronic and radio reconnaissance; determination of pollution of the sea surface.
If necessary it may be re-equipped easily for transportation people, evacuation of sick and wounded persons. Cargo cabin with volume of 26 m³, highly-mechanized hatch-ramp and airborne loading/unloading equipment allow to perform autonomous loading-unloading and transportation of wide spectrum of cargoes as well as its paradropping. Due to its unique design AN-74 can be operated from poor equipped runways (including ground, pebble, snowy and icy ones). In STOL mode it can transport up to 6 t of cargoes. Simplicity in service, availability of airborne loading equipment provide long-term operation of the airplane far from airdromes. It took the best characteristics of the previous airplanes of the family, which are operated successfully in military divisions of different countries. A new version of AN-74 differs from its predecessors with a number of considerable improvements. It made possible realization of conception of a radical modernization of the AN-74, developed by ANTONOV specialists in cooperation with the partners including those from France, Germany and Sweden. It includes mounting the glass cockpit, the newest instruments of piloting, navigation and communication. Besides, power plant and APU, aircraft and engine control systems, fuel, hydraulic systems and many others. The most modern technologies will be used for aftersale support of the airplane, its maintenance and repair.
13/02/09 defpro.news

Abhinav Bindra zooms to a new high

Bangalore: After touching Olympic heights in Beijing just a few months ago, Abhinav Bindra soared to a new high in a fighter aircraft to join the select list of Indians, including Ratan Tata, who have flown the F-16.
Abhinav touched 20,000 feet in a F-16 IN Super Viper, a fourth-generation fighter from the workshop of American company Lockheed Martin. He was thrilled after an hour-long flight.
The ash-coloured single-engine fighter, which the company got here on lease from the UAE Air Force, rolled off the tarmac at 4.51 pm. In six minutes, it soared above with India's pride on the navigator's seat.
"I've never felt like this before. After Olympics, this was the most exhilarating experience. It was a fantastic feeling,'' said Bindra, who wore a dark-blue flying suit. Piloting Bindra's joyride was Lockheed's test-pilot Paul Randall, who has clocked 4,500 hours of flying time on various F-16 models.
"We went away from the airfield, pulled off a lot of Gs, up to 6.5 Gs. We did some manoeuvres like turns and rolls. And we flew past the clouds at 20,000 feet and almost hit the speed of sound,'' Randall said, giving 10/10 to the gold medalist.
Bindra also had the privilege of manning the flight for a few minutes.
"He made me comfortable. I got extensive briefing ahead of the flight. I attended the medicals in New Delhi on Tuesday and today I was on the simulator for 45 minutes,'' Bindra said.
The Super Viper, called the Ferrari of fighters, can reach 50,000 feet and is capable of flying at speeds just over two machs — twice the speed of sound.
13/02/09 Times of India

Russia to deliver first AWACS plane to India 'soon'

Bangalore: Russia will deliver the first A-50 AWACS aircraft developed on the basis of Il-76MD military transport plane in the near future, a Russian aircraft industry official said on Thursday.
India ordered three A-50EI variants fitted with the Israeli-made Phalcon radar system in 2001. The first aircraft was scheduled to arrive in 2007-08 but has been delayed.
"The AWACS version of Il-76 will be soon delivered to India," Viktor Livanov, vice-president of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation, said at a news conference on the sidelines of the Aero India 2009 air show in India.
In many aspects, the A-50 is comparable to the E-3 Sentry of the U.S. Air Force. It is fitted with an aerial refueling system and electronic warfare equipment, and can detect targets up to 400 km (250 miles) away.
The existing Russian-Indian military-technical cooperation program until 2010 includes up to 200 projects worth about $18 billion.
In addition to the Russian A-50 aircraft, India has recently purchased eight Boeing P-81 long-range maritime reconnaissance (LRMR) aircraft from the United States, and signed a deal with Brazil to jointly integrate domestically developed AWACS systems onto three Brazilian-made Embraer-145 aircraft to be later commissioned with the Indian air force.
13/02/09 RIAN.ru

Disaster mgt team on standby

A customized Russian Anton 32 aircraft, two advanced light helicopters (ALH) and a highly trained crew are ready to jump into action and launch rescue and relief operations during any mishaps during the Aero India at Air Force Station, Yelahanka. A32 is equipped with basic firstaid and 24 stretchers. In case of a disaster, while the ambulances on the ground will bring in casualties, the ALHs will perform search and rescue operations.
The Medical Control Centre will alert the team stationed at the northern end of the runway which will ready the aircraft within minutes after a briefing. The road leading to 24-designated hospitals including command hospitals will be cleared. Feeder ambulances will bring casualties to the aircraft and they will be given first aid and flown to HAL airport. Casualties will be taken to nearby hospitals from there.
The crew of the special team spoke to The New Indian Express and said that they were prepared for any kind of disaster.
“Our reaction time is 30 minutes. Our aircraft can land in all weather and on all surfaces. We have already obtained clearances and have priority landing at any place,” said Wing Commander Saravanan, who is the Chief Navigation Instructor of the team.
Wing Commander Sreekanth who has a flying experience of more than 4,000 hours will pilot A32 and Squadron Leader Anita Apte will co-pilot. Flight
Engineer, Sergeant Moond, will co-ordinate operations between the crew and others.
13/02/09 Hemanth C S and Jayadevan P K/ExpressBuzz

Israel overtakes Russia as Defence's top supplier

Bangalore: In a shift that has Russia and Europe worried, Israel may have overtaken Russia as the biggest beneficiary of India's defence budget in the last two years, officials in the know said. Also worrying the Russians and the Europeans is the growing importance of the US for the Indian military.
Requesting anonymity, a senior official in the defence ministry said that Russia has been the biggest supplier to India's defence sector for decades.
But it may have lost out to Israel, which seems to have cornered a larger share of India's defence spend recently. "I don't have country-wise data but it may be due to differences over Gorshkov and other Russian programmes," the official said.
The Americans, too, have grabbed significant Indian deals. Worried over the developments, Europeans are hoping that India brings in more transparency and balance to its procurement process. Several European firms at the Aero India expressed concerns over the influence that politics has on the country's defence purchases. Of particular concern to them is the trend of purchases without a multi-tender process.
Over the past few years, India has entered into joint development of several missile systems with Israel as also procurement of top-end technologies without a tender process. After the November 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai, the two countries decided on the joint development of medium-range surface-to-air missiles (MRSAM) for the Air Force.
Another European executive said that some of the biggest deals India has signed with the US, too, have been without an open tendering process. Among them are the purchase of USS Trenton for the Navy and the purchase of C-130 J Hercules transport planes. These were done through the FMS route, meaning a government-to-government deal.
13/02/09 Josy Joseph/Daily News & Analysis

America's 'Best' on display at Aero India 2009

New York: The US-India Business Council (USIBC) launched a historic 4-day Executive Defense Mission to Aero India 2009. The Mission is led by Dr. Vicki Panhuise, Honeywell; General (Ret) Chuck Wald, L-3 Communications; and General (Ret) Bruce Scott, ITT Defense International. Lt Gen (Ret) Jeffrey Kohler, The Boeing Company, and a senior advisor to the USIBC Board of Directors, is a special military advisor to the delegation.
US defense companies under the USIBC banner have participated in nine consecutive Executive Missions to India advocating for robust defense cooperation between the United States and India, including transfer of high-end defense technology.The mission leaders expressed optimism on this 'jumbo' mission, saying military-to-military contacts and joint exercises have steadily increased, paving the way for increased defense trade.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) is the host and organizer for Aero India 2009 in Bangalore, February 10-14 and USIBC's partner on the ground.America's top defense companies, including Honeywell, L-3 Communications, ITT, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Bell Helicopter (Textron), Raytheon, Sikorsky, Goodrich, Rockwell Collins, Stonebridge International, The Cohen Group, EP Team and The Fremont Group, among others, participated in Aero India 2009.
The US also demonstrated flying the F/A-18F Super Hornet and C-17 Globemaster-III strategic air lift aircraft by Boeing and the F-16 and C-130J by Lockheed Martin.
12/02/09 Indiapost, USA

Fight for Combat aircraft contract

Day two of Aero India 2009 held here saw the contenders for India’s multi-role combat aircraft (MRCA) contract pitching hard to sell their aircraft.
Representatives from the European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS) comprising Bernhard Genwert, CEO, EADS, Chiefs of Air Forces from UK, Spain, Italy and Germany, and various ambassadors joined the fray to bid for the multi-billion dollar contract from India.
“The European company, which is competing with five other companies including the United States and Russia which are military allies of India, stands a fighting chance as it has a proven track record,” said Genwert at a press conference.
Joining the pitch, Aloysius Rauen, president and CEO of EADS Military Aircraft said, “The company is a heavyweight in terms of economics as well as reliability.” About 156 Eurofighter Typhoons are in service in five nations including the air forces of Spain, Germany and the United Kingdom. The German Air Force Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Klaus Peter Stieglitz, speaking at the conference, said that in the coming years, the Eurofighters will be the backbone of the Luftwaffe.
The Swedish aerospace company SAAB is also in the race with its next generation fighter aircraft Gripen IN. SAAB executives at a press conference here said that it is waiting for the call from India for flying evaluation. It already has aircraft operational in Hungary and the Czech Republic and is looking at bagging deals in various countries including Switzerland, Romania, Croatia, Bulgaria and Slovenia.
Experts opine that while Russia’s long standing military alliance with India may give an edge to the Russian MiG 35s, improved relations between the US and India may also help American companies.
Six aircraft are competing for the order - the Saab Gripen, Eurofighter Typhoon, Dassault Rafale, Mikoyan MiG 35 and the American F-16 IN and F/A 18 IN . So far, Mikoyan and Dassault have been regular suppliers of aircraft for the Indian Air Force and in terms of transfers of technology, licensed production in India, personnel training, supply of spare parts, maintenance and upgrading.
13/02/09 ExpressBuzz

Bangalore, India - Featuring twin Ardiden 1-H1 turboshaft engines

The "Aero India 2009" trade show in Bangalore is the occasion for Turbomeca to report the successful maiden flight of the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) Dhruv helicopter. Featuring two Ardiden 1-H1 series production engines, this flight took place on January 12 at the HAL Helicopter Division, Bangalore, India.
The Ardiden 1H1 engine, to be certified in India under the name "Shakti", demonstrated excellent aeromechanical behavior during this maiden flight, confirming its performance capabilities in demanding flight conditions at altitude on the Leh base in north India. The Ardiden 1H1 has been designed to carry out the most demanding missions at altitude and in hot and cold weather. Developed in cooperation with HAL as part of an industrial partnership agreement signed in February 2003, this engine combines simplicity, state-of-the-art technology, robustness and modernity, and all for a significantly lower cost of ownership in comparison to its competitors.
The Dhruv has a take-off weight of 5,500 kg and will initially equip the Indian Armed forces. Under the February 2003 agreement, several hundred engines are to be produced over the next 10 years.
The Indian Ministry of Defence has ordered 159 Dhruv helicopters to date.
13/02/09 World Aeronautical Press Agency/Avionews

Boeing pitches C-17 to India, following request for information

Boeing is offering the C-17 Globemaster to India, following the country's request for information for strategic lift transport aircraft.
The C-17, which is on flying and static display at the Aero India 2009 show in Bangalore this week, has been in India's radar for some time. Boeing briefed the country's air force in October 2007. However, New Delhi had not been expected to move ahead with the requirement, as it had concluded a deal for six Lockheed Martin C-130Js in early 2008.
"We received the RFI in 2008 and have now responded," says Boeing Military Aircraft president Chris Chadwick. "We expect to engage in further discussions with India and believe that a request for proposals would come out soon."
The C-17 has been ordered by Australia, Canada, the UK, Qatar and a consortium of NATO members, as well as the USAF.
12/02/09 Siva Govindasamy/Flight International

Indian Aerospace Industry Among the Fastest Growing in the world

Bangalore: Minister of State for Defence Mr M M Pallam Raju, released a report titled " Changing Dynamics – India's Aerospace Industry" on the second day of "Aero India 2009" organised by Defence Exhibition Organisation of Ministry of Defence in association with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).This is the first such report on the industry. It gives a snapshot of the current scenario, opportunities, challenges and the direction for the future. The report was prepared with the joint efforts of CII and PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC). Lack of any credible benchmarks and authenticated figures on the Aerospace Industry in Indiaare the main drivers for CII to initiate and bring out the report. The report documents the capabilities of Aerospace manufacturing and Maintenance Repair Overhaul (MRO) industry.
The report clearly states that the process of transformation has begun and Indian Aerospace industry players can look forward to take advantage of the new opportunities emerging from global scenario.
Releasing the report Mr M M Pallam Raju said, though Aero India in Bangaloreand Def Expo in Delhishowcase the capabilities and provide leads to emerging opportunities, there has been no comprehensive data till now which can be used by an entrepreneur to make their investment plans in the sector. "This report has not only filled that gap but also has given the directions to approach the market," he said.
Indian Aerospace Industry consists of Civil and Defence segments. The former is driven by general industrial growth and the increase in air travelers whereas the latter is driven by threats around the country and the need to modernize the armed forces.
Though currently the Indian Aerospace Industry is primarily driven by Government and PSUs, there are opportunities in public as well as private sectors in the entire life cycle from designing to building. Indian Aerospace Industry is one of the fastest growing aerospace markets in the world and has been attracting major global aerospace companies across the globe. OEMs are moving from vertically integrated manufacturing to design and systems integration.
"Indian aerospace is one of the fastest-growing aerospace markets in the world driven by continued economic growth resulting in growing passenger traffic and domestic aircraft demand. Indiais poised to become a manufacturing destination. The key drivers include liberal investment policies in civil aviation and defence, a proactive defence offset policy, a strong manufacturing base, cost advantages, a well educated talent pool, global competitiveness in IT and an attractive special economic zones law. It also has the potential to become a MRO destination due to labour cost competitiveness, availability of specialist capabilities and its locational advantages," says the report.
12/02/09 PRESS RELEASE/Aero India

Unused airstrips a security threat, says Air Chief

Bangalore: Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal F H Major on Thursday said unused airstrips in the country posed a serious security threat and appealed to the state government to provide them adequate security.
Major told reporters at Aero India that these airstrips, which number upto 500, could be used by terrorists to operate small aircraft.
“The unused airstrips can be used for not so honest purposes and being a state subject, the Home Ministry has asked the state governments to secure them,” he said.
With India’s air defence surveillance a bit weak and IAF having a few glitches at low-level radar coverage, threat perception should be viewed seriously.
Admitting that IAF squadron strength was below sanctioned strength, he said at the moment, the squadron strength is 34 as against sanctioned strength of thirty-nine-and-half.
He also said IAF would like fewer types of aircraft instead of a diversified fleet as in the case now.
13/02/09 ExpressBuzz

When I flew a combat aircraft

Bangalore: On Day 2 of Aero India 2009, I flew a Gripen combat aircraft. It wasn't too tough with pilot Jonas Jeppsson explaining the basics.
Once in the cockpit, it’s just a matter of pulling the joystick and I make the sky my destination. What do I know about flying? Nothing. But once in the SAAB Gripen cockpit simulator, it is about a few buttons here and a series of mysterious numbers all around showing the position, altitude, route, target, speed and other incomprehensible things.
As I hop into the cockpit and settle down, Jeppsson begins to explain the flight details but half of it is beyond me. But soon, I position the fighter for take-off and it begins to cruise down the runway. As I pick up speed, somewhere from behind I hear the roar of an aircraft. Maybe, it was just one of the real ones outside, making a sortie. The pilot releases a lever and I pull up the joystick and the GS 39 CD flies away, not too straight, but at high speed nevertheless. I am soon experiencing a 7G force. In real life at this pressure, without the required training, I would've heard my bones getting crushed.
I see the green fields below me, some indistinct piece of land far below. As I get a grip of things, Jeppsson makes me turn a loop and I am soon flying the wrong-side up. Then, I begin to cruise over a water body and just then, a wrong move and as I am about to crash, a red line shows up. The pilot steadies the aircraft and it's back on track.
As this simulator is of a combat aircraft, on the left panel is the electronic warfare system, the altitude, speed meters and the route with position on the middle screen and radar details on the other side. Another pilot explains if a target has to be followed, it would show up on one of the screens.
13/02/09 Deepa Bhasthi/Times of India

Phoren delegates are head-turners in Indian togs

Bangalore: A splash of local flavour. Perhaps that was the subtle agenda. Or maybe the “phoren” women just wanted a taste of the Indian fashion curry. At the Aero India, several delegates were seen walking around in stilettos and Indian clothes, from the traditional salwar kameez to the sari draped in the most innovative fashion.
A tall Russian delegate with flaming orange hair and gold-embroidered sky blue saree that she draped around like a shawl, was an interesting sight among the crowd, the MiGs, the Mantis and the Sukhois.
In killer high heels, the Russian says `no' to a `Do you speak English?' query. Moments later, a group of young men approach her for a picture. This prompts others and soon, there is a line of people wanting to be photographed with her. The Russian prances about and eyes turn.
There were several others in salwar kameez. A major company was also playing a video of foreigners in Indian clothes performing to a Hindi movie song. Most aviation companies that are participating in the show have their female employees at the stalls, and many visitors were seen taking pictures with them. And they had no qualms obliging.
Pilots were there in uniform, getting pictures of themselves taken and also with visitors. From mobile phone cameras to high-end camera models, many at the show were shutter-bug happy, posing with the aircraft and the men who ruled them on the skies. Taking to the skies has been one of human civilization's `out there' fantasies. In a little way, the show at Yelahanka was fulfilling for everyone, in their own different ways.
13/02/09 Times of India

HAL gets back 450 of its former employees

Bangalore: Recession seems to be working positively in a way for the State-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, which says it has got back 450 of its former employees after it advertised jobs for them.
Also, some 50,000 candidates flocked for 250 vacancies at the defence major recently. “If you want to work with us, you have a 1-in-250 chance,” the HAL Chairman, Mr Ashok Baweja, said at a news briefing at Aero India here on Thursday.
“We were desperate for people with more experience and when we advertised, we got 450 people back. You can find them manning our joint ventures with Edgewood, Samtel and Elbit Systems,” he said.
The second PSU pay committee’s recommendations did the trick, according to Mr Sanjiv Sahi, Director, HR. The committee late last year recommended 30-40 per cent upward revision of pay scales for PSU staff.
HAL has 34,000 staff and will keep it at that level. People requirements for its large and emerging jobs can anyway be met by outsourcing, Mr Baweja said.
13/02/09 Business Line

USIBC leads large mission to Aero India

Bangalore: Several top U.S. defense companies are taking part in a U.S.-India Business Council delegation at the Aero India 2009 defense conference.
The USIBC is an organization working to strengthen ties between the United States and India on defense technologies. The USIBC executive defense mission to Aero India 2009, taking place in Bangalore through Sunday, marks the ninth year for the growing collaboration between India and U.S. defense companies.
Officials say the executive defense mission is being led by Vicki Panhuise of Honeywell, retired Gen. Chuck Wald from L-3 Communications and retired Gen. Bruce Scott from ITT Defense International, along with retired Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Kohler from Boeing.
"The impressive turnout of U.S. companies on this executive mission speaks volumes as to our member companies' commitment to partner with India," Ron Somers, USIBC president, said in a statement.
12/02/09 UPI

Falcon to carry corporate honchos

Mumbai: Pune figures in the list of six cities from where orders have been placed for Dassault Falcon 7Xm, one of the best selling business jets. The plane would be displayed at Aero India-2009 and six aircrafts would be delivered within the next three months in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune.
Dassault has the highest market share in the premium business, large cabin jet segment in India. To support this growing fleet, Falcon Customer Service recently relocated Falcon's Customer Service Manager for India, Aadil Goulamaly, to Mumbai, following the opening of a new spares distribution centre in Mumbai in mid 2008.
2008 was a strong year for Falcon sales despite the global economic downturn. The order totalled 500 aircrafts, almost half of them for the Falcon 7X.
12/02/09 Sakaaltimes

India, Russia to jointly develop multi-role transport aircraft

New Delhi: India and Russia have decided to set up a 50:50 joint venture (JV) in the next few months to develop a multi-role transport aircraft at an estimated cost of USD 600 million.
Announcing this Thursday in India's southern city of Bangalore, President and Chairman of United Aircraft Corporation (of Russia) Alexey I. Fedorov said his country will soon identify the firm which would work along with Bangalore-based Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to develop the aircraft.
"Within a few months, the joint venture will be in place," Indian wire agency United News of India (UNI) quoted him as saying.
The jointly developed transport aircraft would be inducted into the Russian and Indian Air Force, he said on the sidelines of the ongoing South Asia's biggest airshow in Bangalore "Aero India 2009."
12/02/09 Khabrein

Nishant UAV to be handed over to Indian Army soon

The country’s premier agency in the aviation sector, Aeronautical Development Establishment (ADE) will be handing over NISHANT, it’s first indigenously made Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to Indian Army very soon. NISHANT, which means ‘end of darkness’ is a tactical UAV and can be employed in tactical areas in a local domain. “The limited series production is specially prepared for Indian Army as per their requirements. The confirmatory trials of NISHANT are planned and it is ready for delivery”, Project Director, ADE, Shri G Srinivasa Murthy said.
ADE has also embarked upon an ambitious programme to build another UAV with Medium Altitude Long Endurance (MALE) that has multi-mission capability. RUSTOM, named after Rustom Damania, who was instrumental in conceptualizing the idea, will have 300 km range with 200 kg payload. According to Shri Murthy, RUSTOM will be in a flying stage in about 3 years. With an endurance level of more than 24 hours, this UAV can be used by all three armed forces. RUSTOM can be useful in reconnaissance and surveillance, target acquisition and designation, communications relay and signal intelligence. ADE has acquired about 4200 acres of land in Chitragurga district in Karnataka which is being developed for test range only for UAV.
The tactical highlights of NISHANT include multi-mission day/night capability using advance payloads, jam resistant command link and digital down link.
Prototypes of both UAVs are displayed at the ongoing Aero India 2009 at Yelahanka air base in Bangaluru.
12/02/09 Web News Wire

Indian air force to receive BrahMos cruise missiles in 2012

Bangalore: The BrahMos supersonic cruise missile will be commissioned by the Indian air force in 2012, the head of the BrahMos Aerospace company said on Thursday.
Established in 1998, BrahMos Aerospace, a joint Indian-Russian venture, produces and markets BrahMos supersonic missiles, whose sea-based and land-based versions have been successfully tested and put into service with the Indian army and navy.
"The [BrahMos] missile will be put in service in 2012," the company's CEO, Sivathanu Pillai said, presenting the airborne version of the missile at the Aero India-2009 air show in India.
The BrahMos missile has a range of 290 km (180 miles) and can carry a conventional warhead of up to 300 kg (660 pounds). It can effectively engage ground targets from an altitude as low as 10 meters (30 feet) and has a top speed of Mach 2.8, which is about three times faster than the U.S.-made subsonic Tomahawk cruise missile.
"For the airborne version...we had to reduce the mass of the missile and to ensure aerodynamic stability after its separation from the aircraft. The air-launched platform has its own initial speed during the launch of the missile, so we have reduced the size of the booster. Now the missile is ready," Pillai told RIA Novosti in an exclusive interview last year.
The Indian Air Force had chosen Russian-made SU-30 MKI Flanker-H multirole fighter as a trial platform for the missile, but it will take up to four years to complete the upgrade of the aircraft so that it can carry and launch BrahMos missiles, the official added.
12/02/09 RIAN.ru

BEML targets Rs 100cr orders from offset business

The company has set up a new business division, Aerospace Manufacturing Division, to manufacture a host of components and aggregates.
According to V Mohan, director (defence business), BEML, the company is looking at a business worth Rs 100 crore in the next two years from the offset business opportunities.
"We are already in the business of making ground support equipment like aircraft towing tractors, automatic weapon loaders and crash fire tenders. We want to enlarge the product base in this sector by getting into the manufacture of various aerospace components and aggregates as we have a necessary machine shop and equipment ready at KGF and Mysore units," he said
Talking to Business Standard on the sidelines of Aero India 2009, here today, he said the company is currently in talks with several aerospace companies and is likely to enter into memorandum of understanding with them shortly.
"There is a big opportunity available as part of the offset business and we want to explore them as part of our diversification plans," he said.
BEML wants to manufacture a wide range of ground support equipment, small structures, gear and transmission aggregates among others. "The location for setting up a new manufacturing complex for aerospace components will be decided based on what type of components will be awarded to us by the customers," he said.
The company has recently exported 5 units of aircraft towing tractors to Honduras worth Rs 1.5 crore and is expecting more export orders.
12/02/09 Mahesh Kulkarni/Business Standard

India unveils plans for LCA 'Mark 2'

India plans to begin work on an upgraded version of the Tejas Light Combat Aircraft, with industry aiming to start deliveries of these "Mark II" aircraft after the first 40 have been manufactured.
"The LCA Mark 2 will have a bigger and more powerful engine, the fuselage will be changed, it will have bigger wings, and the aircraft will be more aerodynamic," says Hindustan Aeronautics chairman Ashok Baweja, whose company manufactures the fighter. "There are upgrades down the line in every global fighter programme and that is the case with the Tejas as well."
He adds that HAL will deliver 40 LCAs to the Indian Air Force in the Mark I configuration - 20 in the fighter configuration and 20 in the trainer configuration. The IAF is expected to eventually order up to 220 LCAs and the Indian navy another 20, and the remaining aircraft will be in the Mark II configuration.
A naval version of the LCA will fly within a year, although this version of the aircraft still faces numerous challenges, says Baweja.
The Tejas, which was developed by the Aeronautical Development Agency, has been in the works for more than a decade. It has faced several delays due to problems with the aircraft's design and the development of an indigenous engine. The IAF refused to commit to the LCA until 2003, and has only ordered 20 due to worries about the aircraft's capabilities.
12/02/09 Flight International

AEROINDIA 2009, BANGALORE DAY 1 FEBRUARY 11, 2009

2009-03-08T21:29:00.000-07:00

Rustom to lock horns with Mantis, Herti

Among the indigenous products which are being unveiled for the first time at the Aero India 2009 is the Defence Research Development Organisation’s (DRDO’s) Medium Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle - Rustom.
A markup of Rustom is being showcased at the Aero India 2009 along with other DRDO products.
Rustom which has a wingspan of 20 metres and weighs 1,800 kg, unlike other DRDO developed Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) like Lakshya and Nishant will be launched by the conventional method and not the launcher as in the case of the Lakshya and Nishant.
DRDO is awaiting clearance from the government and is expected to shortly take up the project.
The Medium Altitude Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicle is being developed by DRDO for the three services, Indian Army, Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force.
Rustom will replace/ supplement the Heron UAVs in service that are with the Indian armed forces.
The Rustom will be competing against the BAE Systems’ Mantis which is unveiled for the first time during the show.
Mantis, a new autonomous UAV, being developed by BAE Systems, will be making its international debut at the show. A full-size Mantis and Herti will grace the area outside the BAE Systems pavilion.
12/02/09 ExpressBuzz

Air Force Modernisation Triggers Growth of Aero Space Industry: Fali H Major

Particularly after 2007, the activities related technology upgradations, modernizations and new inductions are taking place more rapidly than ever before In Indian Air Force. This is being achieved with the co-ordinated efforts of Indian and Foreign Aviation Industry with Defence Forces. Mr Fali H Major, Air Chief Marshal of Indiagave a detailed account of modernization process speaking to media on the second day of "Aero India 2009" which is being organized by Defence Exhibition Organisation (Ministry of Defence) in association with Confederation of Indian Industriy (CII).
"The environment around Indiacreated the need for making Indian Air Force more credible by resorting to rapid modernization. The 'Aero India 2009' mirrored the environment in the air as there are many technology platforms on display compared to the Aero India 2007," Air Chief explained. "This environment will drive Indian Aero Space Industry to prosper in the coming years," he added.
Air Chief outlined Air Power is not just the ability to fight or bomb some places, but it lies in intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capacities, which are being improved on a continuous basis. In this regard, Indiais already using unmanned ultra light flying machines and efforts are going on to make their payloads as effective as possible.
" Though the declining number of fighting squadrons is an issue, there is no need to get alarmed, as the reason behind it is inducting newer technologies and fighting capabilities, which makes the ability more important than sheer numbers," Mr Fali H Major further stated. But coming to number, Indiawill achieve the Government authorized figure of 39 and half squadrons from the current level of 34 which may even decline a bit due to phasing out and modernizing operations. The reason for this is long gestation period required to acquire new radars, aircraft, or platforms, "Air Chief said.
Replying to questions on strategies post 26/11, Air Chief stated, there is no change in our strategies as we are prepared for all kinds of eventualities including the ones posed by such incidents at micro level. He said though there are gaps in covering entire country with radars, even now we can focus on even smaller places whenever we want.
"Currently, managing huge inventories is an issue due to the fact that we are using varied platforms, fighter planes and support system. When we bring this, hopefully in the next few years, we will use less than 4 or 5 main fighter planes and transport carriers, we can bring down the inventory levels and effectively manage it. "said Mr Fali H Major.
"Air Chief admitted that several unused air strips pose threat to country's security, but securing them is the responsibility of the respective state governments," he added.
12/02/09 PRESS RELEASE/Aero India

EADS flying the LCA into Indian market

Bangalore: Although more cautious than the all-out performances of the established fighters, Tejas, the Indian-built Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), went far beyond anything it had ever displayed before, surprising the spectators with steep climbs, an inverted pass, high-gravity turns and loops.
But even amidst success, the Tejas is struggling to overcome major development hurdles. Its maker, Bangalore-based Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) has taken the crucial decision to bring in a design consultant, a global aerospace major that would assist Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) to overcome persistent design glitches that dog the LCA, including fuel distribution, uneven braking, flight controls, environment controls and testing.
And while US-based Boeing has declined to supply such know-how, German-Spanish consortium, EADS, one of the makers of the Eurofighter, has aggressively pursued the consultancy as a way of flying into the Indian market.
In multiple interviews with senior Indian and EADS officials, who requested anonymity, Business Standard has pieced together the EADS strategy. The company has decided to supply India with high technology for Indian products that are not directly competing with an EADS product. The Tejas is not in the same category as the heavier Eurofighter.
Having established its presence in the Tejas programme, EADS is confident that it would be well positioned to get its Eurojet EJ200 engine accepted for the Tejas. India is currently deciding between the EJ200 and the GE-414 engine for powering future squadrons of the Tejas. And EADS believes that winning the contract for the EJ200 engine, and producing it in India, would position it perfectly for the lucrative medium fighter contract; twin EJ200 engines power the Eurofighter.
While willing to part with the technology assistance needed to get the LCA over its hump, EADS worries about the possibility of eventually being held responsible for a possible failure in the Tejas development.
“Let’s be clear that we are not underwriting the LCA programme," says a senior European official related with the contract. The contract with EADS is expected to be signed shortly.
The German and Spanish governments have already permitted EADS to part with the technology needed for the Tejas programme; the US government, in contrast, imposed stringent restrictions on Boeing.
12/02/09 Ajai Shukla/Business Standard

‘Tejas’ removes all doubts

Bangalore: A quarter of a century after the project was conceived and being dubbed “as more trouble than its worth”, the Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) ‘Tejas’ on Wednesday proved the theory that there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel, right.
The LCA, on the inaugural day of Aero India 2009, put up a flawless flight display and performed “neverseen- before” manoeuvres, which drew applause.
The take-off LCA from the Air Force Station Yelahanka tarmac was like any of 1,000-odd its has done since its maiden flight on January 4, 2001, but what was in store for the next 10 minutes showed the progress of not just the LCA project, but the indegenisation of India’s defence programme.The LCA showed the capability of the aircraft and put any doubts to rest.
After viewing its performance, an excited Defence Minister A K Antony praised the show put up by the all those involved in the project.
12/02/09 Hemanth CS/ExpressBuzz

Abhinav Bindra set to fly high in Bangalore air show

Olympic gold winner Abhinav Bindra is all set to fly high. Bindra will be flying in an F-16 at the Bangalore air show on Thursday and is quite excited at the prospect.
CNN-IBN: What are your preparations?
Abhinav Binmdra: I had an extensive medical examination on Tuesday, but after that nothing else.
CNN-IBN: Are you nervous? Will you be able to sleep tonight?
Abhinav Binmdra: I'm not nervous. And I generally sleep alright so I hope to have a peaceful night.
CNN-IBN: Have you done anything extreme like taking a ride in F-16?
Abhinav Binmdra: No not really. I did a few things prior to the Olympics. But this is absolutely different and I've never attempted to doa thing like this. It's something new for me, it's a new experience. I'm looking forward to it.
12/02/09 Abhir VP/CNN-IBN

Combat aircraft steal show

Waging a dramatic ‘Battle of Manoeuvrability’ in the air, four foreign aircraft competing for the multi-billion dollar Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircraft lent a decisive business edge to the opening Aero India 2009 flight displays at the Yelahanka air base here on Wednesday.
The seventh edition of the biennial aerospace exposition had just begun.
Designed to impress Defence Minister A K Antony and other key defence officials watching the show, the twists, rolls and breathtaking loops by the F-18 Super Hornet, the F-16, the Russian MiG-35 and Eurofighter Typhoon almost overshadowed the spectacular aerobatics by the Suryakiran and Sarang teams. Clinical business sense laced with entertainment couldn’t have been more potent.
Taking off with a deafening roar, the Eurofighter did an upside-down flypast, returned for a low-speed pass before treating the gathering to a neat vertical climb.
But before the motley crowd of VVIPs and defence officials, media and invitees, could take another breath, the F-18 Super Hornet invaded the sky. In the next few fleeting minutes, the American fighter flew past for an abrupt push upwards at a 1.8 Mk speed.
And then came the MiG-35. With its astounding split-air manoeuvre and 360 degree Hi-G turns, the two-seater was definitely built for some smart moves. The barrel roll and inverted flight with a half roll that followed, and the characteristic Cobra manoeuvre only boosted the MiG-35’s image. Lockheed Martin’s F-16 had something else up its sleeve, performing a nine-G turn at high speed.
Earlier, the IL-78 re-fuelling aircraft made a mark with fuel dispensers attached to two Mirage 2000s in tandem. This flypast was followed by a five-Hawk formation, a five-Jaguar arrow-head formation, and four light combat aircraft in close formation.
12/02/09 Rasheed Kappan/Deccan Herald

The salesmen wear a different kind of suit in this sales pitch

Bangalore: As executives in grey suits of global aerospace firms hard-sell their fighters on the ground for the world’s largest fighter tender by the Indian Air Force (IAF) at the Aero India show here, it is their compatriots in G-suits—the pilots flying the machines—who could eventually swing a deal. G-suit is short for gravity suit that protects pilots from the effects of extreme acceleration while flying.
Like Ricardo Traven, the chief test pilot for the F/A-18.
He shoots the twin-engine fighter of Boeing Co. up into the sky, swivelling and making loops and manoeuvres, in an effort that could make or break a multi-billion dollar deal.
“It is kinda like...what I say, the air show will not sell the airplane, but not going to the air show will probably not result in a sale,” says Traven, a former US Navy test pilot with a record of at least 3,500 hours of flying, looking flushed in his G-suit.
“It is nice for pilots who will fly the planes, but for those standing (on the ground)...perhaps, senior military officials, (it is an opportunity for us) to explain what they get in the plane,” he says.
In the tender for the so-called medium multi-role combat aircraft or MMRCA, which is a deal worth at least Rs42,000 crore, six firms—Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS), Saab International, Dassault Aviation and Russia’s MiG Corp.—are aggressively pitching their fighters.
For the pilots, flying a fighter above Bangalore—a city at a mean sea level of nearly 900m—in the pre-summer heat can be tough.
With the higher temperature, a situation that fighter pilots call pressure altitude or an altitude the aircraft reacts and behaves as if it is at 5,000-6,000ft, not 3,000ft, making handling it a stretch for them.
So, the pilots who fly at the show prepare months in advance. First is to identify the type of aircraft that should be flown here, then comes the equipment and the logistics to fly the planes to the city.
At the show in Bangalore, the potential customer IAF’s pilots are given a test ride on the plane. The ride is just an initial exposure but a professional test pilot, especially a fighter pilot, can gather enough information from just one flight to judge the technical capabilities, says Traven.
An IAF test pilot, who has flown in American fighter planes, says that such rides help them to gain insights on systems such as electronic warfare equipment and radars, which normally is not in the brochure.
At the air show, the fighter planes on show are Russia’s MiG-35, Boeing’s F-18, EADS’ Eurofighter and Lockheed’s F-16.
Saab, the Swedish firm that makes the Gripen, and Dassault that manufactures the Rafael fighter, did not bring the planes, saying, they would be brought to India when test trials begin later this summer.
12/02/09 K. Raghu/Livemint

'No favouritism in fighter aircraft contract'

Bangalore: With the government stressing on transparency in defence deals, Defence Minister A K Antony on Wednesday said there would be "no favouritism" while awarding the USD 10 billion 126 fighter aircraft contract.
"I can assure you that we will not show favouritism to anybody. We will not neglect anybody. The procedure will be transparent and decision will ultimately be based on merits and quality and other conditions," Antony told reporters on the sidelines of the Aero India show here.
"No negative approach and no favouritism. All competitors will get a level playing field," he said.
Six global aerospace companies -- American Boeing's F/A-18 and Lockheed Martin's F-16, French D'assault's Rafale, Swede Saab's Gripen, European consortium EADS' Eurofighter Typhoon, and Russian MiG-35 -- are competing for the IAF's contracts for which the tenders were floated in 2007.
The Defence Ministry plans to conduct the flight trials of the competing aircraft in about a year's time.
On the indigenous Light Combat Aircraft (LCA), Antony said the most "exciting" moment for him at the show was the LCA performing different aerobatics.
12/02/09 PTI/Sify

Three women navigators inspire from within IAF

Bangalore: It's a sign of heights women can achieve and careers they can pursue. While one woman in the IAF is making rapid progress for a date with the Sukhoi aircraft and soon be the first woman co-pilot on the SU-30, two others are following suit.
Savita Barala from Jaipur, now serving in Agra, just graduated as the first woman navigator in the IAF and is ready to take on navigation training on the SU-30 MKI. Inspired by her, two young women joined IAF as navigators and are undergoing training.
Defence officials at Aero India told TOI: "Savita has just graduated as navigator on the Avro and AN-32. She may soon take up navigation on the SU-30 too. She has the ability to train on fighter aircraft. She may even fly the SU-30 in the near future."
At a time when other air forces in the world have inducted women, India is not to be left behind. Defence officials said women officers will not only navigate, but be trained in carpet bombing and parachute dropping as a prelude to training on more complex weapon systems. "The two other women navigators too may also train on the SU-30," officials said.
Three women navigators is a great beginning for IAF's plans to open up combat roles for women. As one SU-30 pilot put it: "The pilot will be busy flying the aircraft according to parameters set by the navigator, which is crucial for identification of targets. The navigator will also have a role to play in air-to-ground missile attacks although missile training has not been taken up yet. Navigation is a serious role. You're pitched headlong into combat on a fighter aircraft. What better high can one have?"
12/02/09 Times of India

Brazilian aircraft firm lands in India

Bangalore: After delivering 200-plus commercial, executive and defence jets to various parts of the world last year, Brasilian manufacturer Embraer, with a firm backlog of nearly $20 billion as of now, is looking at a big market in India. Paramount Airways in India has leased two of the Embraer 170 series aircraft.
Embraer is showcasing its executive jets at the seventh international air show from February 11 to February 15: a super mid-size Legacy 600 and full-scale mock-ups of the Phenom 300 light jet and the Lineage 1000 ultra-large jet cross-section in a closed tent.
"There is a big new market with India one of the most promising markets for us," Embraer vice president, marketing and sales, Asia-Pacific (executive jets) Jose Eduardo Costas told India Today inside the Lineage 1000 plush cabin. "Lots of high net worth individuals and corporates may want to avoid commercial air travel and would prefer the private jet route and they will find these planes very useful."
The company's executive jets portfolio comprises six aircraft: entry level to ultra-large ones.
Phenom 100 can carry up to eight and has a range of 2,182 km, the Legacy 450 carries nine with a 4,260 km range while its largest executive jet carries 19 in five cabin zones and has a 8,334 km range.
The four-decade old aviation company, sited in Sao Jose dos Campos, Sao Paulo, has eight of its executive jets in the country - five with the government and three with private corporations. It is hoping to land its ultra-large Lineage 1000.
11/02/09 Stephen David/India Today

Minister stopped at air show venue

Bangalore: The security in view of the Aero India 2009, at Air Force station was so foolproof on Wednesday that the Minister for Medical Education Ramachandra Gowda had to face problems getting in. On Wednesday, during the inauguration ceremony of the air show, as the Minister tried to gain entrance into the venue without a pass, he was stopped by the commandos. Sources said that after a heated conversation, the police came to his rescue. Later, the police who tried to rescue the minister had a light altercation with the commandos.
However, the brawl ended after the minister was allowed inside after thorough checking.
12/02/09 ExpressBuzz

France offers technology to India to build 'desi' missile

Bangalore: France is ready to transfer technology of its surface-to-air missile to Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) of India so that this country can build its own version, French Minister of State for Defence Jean-Marie Bockel said today.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of air show, Aero India 2009, he said the offer is currently under discussions with Indian authorities.
On the absence of Rafale, made by France's Dassault Aviation, one of the contenders for India's 126 fighter jets contract, from the show, he said Rafale is on display back in France and is available for those who want to test it.
"All the Rafale that could have been sent to India for this air show...Are presently in (combat) operation in Afghanistan", he said.
"Rafale will be present at all stages of evaluation (in India in its bid for the contract) and we believe it's the best plane available", Bockel said.
12/01/09 Press Trust of India

Home-grown firms scouting for international partners and deals

Bangalore: South Asia’s biggest airshow opened here on Wednesday with aerospace firms from 25 countries showcasing their latest hardware, including six aircraft makers pitching for the biggest fighter-jet contract up for grabs in the world.
Despite the global economic slowdown, 592 armament and aerospace companies—half of them Indian, up from 41% in 2007—are taking part in this year’s Aero India event in Bangalore. This year’s edition of the biennial event also features home-grown aerospace component and software firms scouting for international partners and deals.
The level of interest illustrates the significance of India as a market for makers of military hardware. India’s military is forecast to spend at least $30 billion (Rs1.46 trillion) by 2012, a significant portion of it on the purchase of 126 fighter jets for which it has floated the world’s largest military tender in recent years.
The contract is estimated to be worth at least Rs42,000 crore. The Indian Air Force is expected to invite six firms—Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co., Saab AB, Dassault Aviation SA and Russia’s MiG Corp.—to test their aircraft from April to evaluate their capabilities.
US defence firm Raytheon Co., which last year signed deals with eight local firms to develop military electronics, has offered its Airborne Standoff Radar systems to help India reinforce its coastline defences. India began beefing up offshore security after the November terrorist siege of Mumbai in which the attackers travelled unnoticed by sea.
Besides the 126 fighter jets, transport aircraft and airborne warning and control system, India plans to buy 700 helicopters worth $3.5 billion along with artillery, warships and other hardware.
India also wants the winner to reinvest some of the funds from the deal in developing the country’s aerospace and defence sector by sourcing components and services locally in a requirement known as an offset.
The offset policy has opened up a potential opportunity for firms such as Sigma Electro Systems Ltd, a maker of test equipment for aircraft and aircraft systems based in Nashik, Maharashtra.
V.B. Athmaram, managing director of Varisis Advanced Engineering and Software Technologies India Pvt. Ltd, a Bangalore firm that makes radars and electronic warfare systems, said he is signing joint ventures with firms such as Selex Galileo, a unit of Finmeccanica, for offsets deals.
Most of these small Indian companies are located in clusters in Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune, to make components and systems for public sector defence units such as Bharat Electronics Ltd, DRDO and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.
11/02/09 K. Raghu/Naseeb Chand (AFP)/Bloomberg/Livemint

EADS flying the LCA into Indian market

Israel displays third gen AWACS at Aero India

Bangalore: Even as the Indian Air Force (IAF) awaits the delivery of its first airborne early warning and control systems (AWACS), Israel is displaying a compact version of the system mounted on a business jet at the Aero India international air show that opened here on today.
India has purchased three Phalcon AWACS systems from Israel that will be mounted on the Russian-built IL-78 transport aircraft. What Israel is now offering is the third generation Conformal Airborne Early Warning and Control System (CAEWCS) fitted into a modified Gulfstream 550G business jet.
The Israeli offering has an endurance of nine hours, against the IL-78's six hours. This enabled the Gulfstream to fly non-stop from Israel to the Aero India venue at the Yelahanka Air Force Base here.
Based on dual-band technology, the radar was upgraded in 2008 and is being displayed for the first time in India.
11/02/09 IANS/Sify

Suriname buys defence helicopters from India

Paramaribo, Suriname: The Suriname government is buying three helicopters from India for its National Army, the Ministry of Defence here announced on Wednesday. Military sources indicate that the aircraft are mainly for transportation of army personnel, but if necessary they could also be used for combat activities.
During budget debates in parliament in January, Defence Minister, Ivan Fernald, had announced the decision of the government to purchase the military equipment but was relecutant to disclose details since negotiations with India were not yet completed. Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) will deliver the indigenously designed and developed advanced light helicopters (ALH) Dhruv.
The aircrafts will cost some 750 million rupees (US$15.3 million) and are being financed with a credit line from the Indian government.
Currently, Defence Minister Fernald accompanied by his permanent secretary Dennis Kamperveen and lieutenant-colonel Jerry Slijngaard, head of the National Coordination Center for Disaster Management (NCCR) is in India to sign the contracts. The officials will also attend the seventh edition of the international air show, Aero India 2009, which opened Thursday, February 11, in Bangalore and hold talks to advance the defence relations between Suriname and India. Minister Fernald and his Indian counterpart Arackaparambil Kurian Antony will also engage in bilateral talks.
12/02/09 Ivan Cairo/Caribbean Net News

Russia to deliver first Mi-171 helicopter to India in 2010

Bangalore: Russia will deliver the first of 80 Mi-171 transport helicopters to India under a recent contract in 2010, an official from Russia's state arms exporter said on Wednesday.
The Mi-171 is an export version of the Mi-8 Hip helicopter. Currently in production at two factories in the Russian Volga area city of Kazan and the East Siberian city of Ulan-Ude, it features more powerful turboshaft engines and can transport up to 37 passengers.
Some sources estimate the new deal is worth around $662 million. India already has 150 Russian-made Mi-8 and Mi-17 medium-lift helicopters deployed in at least 12 squadrons.
The Indian Air Force used Mi-17 helicopters in a commando assault on the Nariman House Jewish center in November last year, which killed some of the 10 terrorists involved in a three-day bloody rampage in Mumbai. Russia started this year deliveries of Mi-171 helicopters to another customer, Iran, under a $45 million contract. They will be used by Iran's Red Crescent for rescue missions and the evacuation of people injured in natural disasters. Russia also hopes to win a tender to provide India with six Il-78MD-90 fuel tankers, the head of the United Aircraft Corporation said at an air show in the southern city of Bangalore. Aero India-2009 is one the largest aerospace shows in the Asia-Pacific region, hosting leading manufacturers, vendors and suppliers from 35 countries. The existing Russian-Indian military cooperation program through 2010 features up to 200 projects worth about $18 billion.
11/02/09 Russian News & Information Agency

Dassault Falcon displays jet at Aero India 2009

Bangalore: World's major jet manufacturer, Dassault Falcon, will exhibit at the Aero India 2009 exhibition, displaying a Falcon 7X, the best selling business jet which has won orders worldwide including six aircraft for delivery within the next three months in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Pune.
Dassault has the highest market share in the premium business, large cabin jet segment in India, driven by new models with exceptional performance, comfort and fuel economy. To support this growing fleet, Falcon Customer Service recently relocated Falcon's Customer Service Manager for India, Aadil Goulamaly, to Mumbai, following the opening of a new spares distribution center in Mumbai in mid 2008.
Last year, 2008, was a strong year for Falcon sales despite the global economic downturn, which began to impact in the fourth quarter. The order book at the end of the year totaled 500 aircraft, almost half of which are for the Falcon 7X.
In June 2008, Dassault Falcon announced the opening of a spares distribution center in Mumbai, India. The Mumbai distribution center is managed by DHL. Through their bonded warehouse, DHL, in partnership with Team Aviation, is responsible for the import/export, shipping, receiving and transportation of Genuine Dassault Falcon Replacement Parts to operators from this warehouse.
To enhance support for customers in India, Dassault Falcon already has Authorized Service Centers located in Singapore and Dubai, while Indian service centers are currently being evaluated. Dassault’s presence in India also includes a liaison office in New Delhi. That office serves both the Indian Falcon operators and the Indian military fleet which includes 50 Mirage fighter jets.
11/02/09 Merinews.com

Rolls-Royce Executive:Plan To Bid For India Jaguar Engine Program

Bangalore: Rolls-Royce Group PLC said Wednesday it plans to bid for an Indian government program to replace the engines of its 125-strong fleet of Jaguar combat jets.
"On the Jaguar engine upgrade program, we have offered (the Indian government) a lot of technical details," Martin Fausset, the managing director for defense aerospace at Rolls-Royce, told a news conference at the Aero India show. "We expect the request for proposals soon."
Fausset didn't disclose the estimated value of the potential order or a timeframe.
A senior executive of Honeywell International Inc. (HON), which also plans to bid for the same contract, said Tuesday that India's deal will likely be for 280 engines including spare engines for the twin-engine fighter jet.
Under a prior agreement with Rolls-Royce, India's state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. has been manufacturing the engines for Jaguar since 1981.
11/02/09 Rumman Ahmed/Dow Jones/easy Bourse

Labels: Engines, Jaguar, Rolls-Royce, USA

To read the news in full | PermaLink

Lockheed Martin plans Raytheon protection suite for F-16

Bangalore: The race for the Indian Air Force (IAF) order for 126 combat jets just got hotter with US defence major Lockheed Martin opting to equip its F-16IN Super Viper with electronics giant Raytheon's protection suite, which the company described as the “world's most advanced electronic warfare system”.
The two companies announced the tie-up on the sidelines of the seventh edition of the Aero India international air show that opened here on Wednesday.
The advanced counter measures electronic system (ACES) comprises a radar-scanning receiver, a jammer and a chaff and flare dispenser, as well as a decoy that is towed behind the aircraft.
According to Orville Prins, Lockheed Martin's vice president for business development in India, Raytheon's electronic warfare systems “represent the latest technology and the best value solution for India”.
The F-16 is one of the six aircraft in the fray for the IAF order. The others are the Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornet, the French Rafale, the Swedish Gripen, the Russian MiG-35 and the Eurofighter Typhoon built by a four-nation European conglomerate. The tender was floated in 2007 and the bids were opened last April.
11/02/09 IANS/Sify

AERO INDIA 2009 IN BANGALORE, INIDA SPECIAL COVERGAE

2009-03-08T21:22:00.000-07:00

India's aero show takes off with a roar in Bangalore

Bangalore: Aero India 2009 took off to a roaring start on Wednesday with India flaunting its air power in a stunning aerobatics display by fighter jets, helicopters and jet trainers.
Billed as the biggest biennial event in South Asia, the five-day seventh edition of Aero India 2009 began on a sunny and breezy day from the Indian Air Force (IAF) station at Yelahanka, about 20 km from Bangalore.
With a security blanket in place to ward off terror attacks, about 5,000 people, including diplomats and air chiefs from the world over, were treated to a two-hour spectacular show by scores of IAF pilots.
The inaugural by Defence Minister A.K. Antony in the presence of Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa was marked by a flypast and breathtaking manouveres from IAF's assorted aircraft -- Sukhoi-30MKI, Mirage 2000, Jaguar, MiG-21, supersonic jet trainer Hawk and subsonic trainer Kiran and a slew of helicopters.
Four indigenous Tejas Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) of the state-run Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) scrambled over the gathering, while a IAF fleet of Dhruv Advanced Light Helicopters (ALH) aerobatic team christened Sarang kept spirits soaring high.
IAF's transport behemoths and air-to-air refuelling aircraft had the spectators in awe with their sheer size and functionality mid-air.
"Growing in stature, size and public participation, the air show has emerged as the most important event in South Asia, drawing global attention," Defence Secretary (production) Pradeep Kumar said in his introductory remarks.
With 25 countries participating and 50 official delegations, including many led by their defence ministers and air chiefs, the Indian version of the air show has come of an age to turn into a war theatre for the world's major aerospace firms and global consortiums.
A total of 592 firms, including 303 from overseas and 289 from the Indian subcontinent, are showcasing their products and technologies spanning military and civilian sectors to woo the country's three armed services and the burgeoning aviation industry.
The Indian government is set to invest a whopping Rs.1.4 trillion ($30 billion) over the next five years to modernise and upgrade its defence services.
The IAF order to induct 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) into its depleting fleet as a replacement to the ageing MiG-21 old warhorse has made the six global aerospace bidders vie for the estimated $10 billion (Rs.500 billion) contract by flying in their metal birds to show their strike power.
A dozen global aerospace firms, including the state-run HAL, as well as US and German air forces have flown in their fighter jets, transport planes, a fleet of helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles for flying and static displays at the event.
Spanning an area of 44,000 square metres as against 30,000 sq m in 2007, the exhibition area has five international pavilions hosting Australia, Belgium, Germany, Israel and Romania, 54 chalets and about 600 stalls to house international and Indian firms and a host of facilities forming the eco-system.
With the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) riding high on the successful launch of India's maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1 to the moon, a space pavilion is also put up to flag the country's prowess in space technology and space applications.
"We are expecting about 125,000 visitors, including 50,000 business delegates and about 75,000 people from across the country, especially Bangalore and Karnataka,"Kumar said.
11/02/09 IANS/The Hindu

China's participation at Aero India evokes interest

Bangalore: The communist China's participation for the first time in an Indian air show has generated interest but New Delhi has sought to downplay it saying too much need not be read into it.
For the first time, China would be sending a delegation, Defence Production Secretary Pradeep Kumar told media persons here on Tuesday.
It would be a seven-member Chinese delegation. He said one should not read too much into it. Countries take part in air shows for commercial considerations, he said, hinting there is nothing political about it.
Asked why Pakistan is not participating in Aero India 2009, Mr Kumar said 'we don't invite Pakistan'. On why India did not invite Pakistan, he said "I don't have to answer" and then retorted: "What's your suggestion? (do we have to invite Pakistan or not?."
Defense public sector undertaking Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) and aircraft manufacturer Boeing on Tuesday announced that they have signed a MOU to jointly develop an analysis and experimentation Centre in India to offer customers the ability to make better informed decisions in modernising India's defense forces.
11/02/09 Mangalorean

HAL to showcase its export version of Dhruv

Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) will display the export version of the indigenously designed and developed advanced light helicopter (ALH) Dhruv for the first time at the seventh edition of the international air show, Aero India 2009, starting here on February 11.
“This is for the first time that the export version of the ALH will be on display,” secretary (defence production) Pradeep Kumar told reporters, here today. The exhibition of the export version of the ALH at Aero India 2009 is significant with the public sector undertaking HAL set to to export five helicopters to Ecuador. “The deal has been finalised to export five Dhruv helicopters to Ecuador and the air chief of the Ecuador air force will be here for the airshow to collect the keys,” Kumar said.
However, he added that Afghanistan and Malaysia, which had earlier shown interest in the flagship helicopter of the HAL, had not made any export request. “We are in talks with Mauritious and Suriname for the export orders,” Kumar added. Besides there will also be many firsts to the seventh edition of the air show. Following the success of India’s lunar mission Chandrayaan, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has also opened a pavilion at the air show.
11/02/09 Business Standard

Raytheon offers airborne radar for India's homeland security

Bangalore: With India going into overdrive to secure its coastline in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, US defence major Raytheon is positioning its airborne standoff radar (ASTOR) as the ideal solution for the country's homeland security.
"This may be something of interest to India. There's a lot of opportunity here," Mike Henchey, Raytheon's Vice President for space and airborne systems, said.
Pointing to the success achieved by the British defence ministry in operating the system, Henchey, who is here for Aero India-2009 that opened today, said he hoped to discuss its benefits with Indian officials during the five-day international air show.
The ASTOR system, Raytheon says, provides a highly effective 24-hour surveillance and target acquisition capability. It delivers wide area, all weather surveillance and reconnaissance imagery in near real time for peacekeeping, war fighting and homeland security needs.
Raytheon, which has had a presence in India for the past 60 years, views India's new policy for procuring military hardware as an opportunity for building long term partnerships that would benefit the country economically and industrially.
"We see the offsets clause as an opportunity for partnerships and we would be very pleased to work with our partners here," Henchey pointed out.
11/02/09 IANS/Sify

World gathers in India to win major contracts

Bangalore: At this year’s Aero India show, a biennial schmooze fest for aerospace firms, the world’s biggest makers of fighter jets, spy planes, helicopters and radars will show off their wares in Bangalore starting Wednesday, hoping to win some of the tens of billions of dollars India is expected to spend buying such hardware.
Aerospace firms say they will be patient with India, where decisions still take years coming, although the defence procurement process has accelerated over the past decades.
Patience could eventually prove rewarding.
Aided by a six-year economic boom, India’s military will spend at least $30 billion (Rs1.46 trillion) by 2012, a significant portion of it on 126 fighter jets, for which it has floated the world’s largest tender in recent years. The deal for the so-called medium multi-role combat aircraft may cost some Rs42,000 crore.
India is the only major nation in the world that uses weapons and fighter planes from both Western nations and its traditional ally Russia. China is a large importer from Russia while the US and Europe insist on locally made weapon systems for their Armed Forces. Moscow rarely imports arms.
The Indian Air Force’s (IAF) plans include replacing a third of its fleet of Russian-built MiG-21 planes. “(In the) next few years, you will find every bit (of) inventory (with) some kind of transformation. Assets being inducted, upgraded and replaced—it will be an entirely new environment,” India’s air chief, Air Marshal Fali Major, had said on 17 January.
The IAF is expected to invite six firms—Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., European Aeronautic, Defence and Space Co., Saab International, Dassault Aviation, and Russia’s MiG Corp.—to test their planes from April over terrain ranging from the deserts of Rajasthan to the snow-laden peaks of the Himalayas.
On a conference call with analysts late last month, Bruce Tanner, chief financial officer of Lockheed Martin, put in context the Indian deal with other potential supply contracts in Taiwan for 66 of its F-16 planes and Romania’s nearly two dozen. The longer objective is the India competition (or deal) for the MMRCA (medium multi-role combat aircraft), which is 126 aircraft, Tanner said.
Traditionally, India’s defence purchases have been long-drawn and often delayed. The 66 Hawk Advanced Jet Trainer deal it signed in 2004 with British aircraft maker BAE Systems Plc. took at least two decades to conclude.
That process has speeded up, with India sewing up deals worth at least $5 billion to buy planes, missiles and helicopters since the last Aero Show in 2007.
Deals since then include the purchase of 80 Russian-made Mi-17v5 helicopters, three Boeing business jets for VIP travel, and six C-130J Super Hercule transport aircraft from Lockheed Martin. Three IAF squadrons are being equipped with Israel’s Spyder surface-to-air missiles and two squadrons with Akash medium-range missiles from Bharat Electronics Ltd. In addition, the Armed Forces are acquiring 159 Dhruv advanced light helicopters from Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd.
11/02/09 K. Raghu/Livemint

India's largest-ever air show from today

Bangalore: India’s largest-ever air show, Aero India-2009, opens here on Wednesday with participation by frontline fighter aircraft from the United States, Europe and Russia, all of whom are in the race for the Union Government’s plans to acquire multi-role combat aircraft.
The Americans have flown-in the F16 (Lockheed Martin) and have been providing “sorties” to people before it flies Olympian Abhinav Bindra, while Boeing will showcase its F/A18 Hornet.
MiG 35
Europe plans to pitch the “Typhoon” while the Russians are here with the MiG 35 with an ad line, “For India, with India”, plastered across billboards here. The French Rafael and Swedish Grippen will also mark their presence.
Supporting these efforts while building defence relations, British High Commissioner Richard Staag and U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission Steven J. White addressed the media here on Tuesday, while French Minister of State for Defence Jean-Marie Bockel plans to do so on Wednesday after Defence Minister A.K. Antony inaugurates the show.
These frontline fighters are in the bidding for India’s plans to purchase 126 medium multi-role combat aircraft worth Rs. 45,000 crore. Their spectacular display is a show stealer. The biennial event has this year attracted a record 592 companies, including 303 from 25 countries, exhibiting their products over 44,000 square metres expanse.
Being held under high security cover and strict access controls, the event will have 289 Indian companies with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) showcasing its successful bid to supply seven advanced light helicopters to Ecuador at the air show. Mr. Antony will be handing over the keys to the Ecuadorian Air Chief on the occasion, symbolising the execution of HAL’s first export order.
However, the HAL’s plan to fly Intermediate Jet Trainer (IJT) fell off the shelf following a mishap here last week. Pradeep Kumar, Defence Secretary (Production), sought to downplay the change in plans owing to the setback at a news conference here stating that HAL is still testing the product and not yet ready to fly now. The completely indigenised British trainer Hawk will also be part of the display.India-Russia joint venture missile Brahmos is on display as have many Indian companies which have joint ventures with other leading manufactures..
11/02/09 K.V. Prasad/The Hindu

US defence companies to fly high at Aero India

Bangalore: Six major global aerospace companies will slug it out at the Aero India International Show, trying to demonstrate the strike power of their fighter jets in the high-profile pitch for an order worth $10 billion from the Indian Air Force (IAF).
US-based defence companies will dominate the seventh edition of the bi-annual aero show to showcase an array of military and civilian aircraft for static and flying displays.
US defence giants — Boeing and Lockheed Martin — are in the race for the $10-billion fighter-plane contract — medium multi-role combat aircraft (MMRCA) — the largest in the world over the past 15 years.
Defence production secretary Pradeep Kumar said the technical evaluation of the six bids was underway and trials would be conducted thereafter.
Other contenders include Eurofighter Typhoon of European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS), Gripen of Saab, French Rafale of Dassault and MiG-35 of MiG for the IAF order.
The US pavilion will also sport aerospace giants such Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Bell Helicopter which will showcase their products. The focus of the event will be on B2B activity between Indian, foreign vendors and government organisations.
Public sector Hindustan Aeronautics will display its Dhruv choppers, five of which will be exported to Ecuador. But HAL’s intermediate jet trainer will be missing in action due to an accident met by a prototype model.
Other indigenous products such as ‘Tejas’ light combat aircraft, ‘Hawk’ advanced jet trainer manufactured by HAL through licence of BAE Systems and Dhruv would perform at the show.
11/02/09 Economic Times

India Evaluating Technical Aspects of Lockheed, Boeing’s Bid

Indian government is evaluating bids by Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and four other companies to supply 126 fighter jets worth $11 billion in the largest military contest in play worldwide.
“It’s a complex process, it will take its own time,” Defense Production Secretary Pradeep Kumar told reporters in Bangalore today ahead of the Aero India air show. “Technical evaluation is on and trials will be conducted.” He wouldn’t say when the deal may be completed.
India in April got bids from six companies to supply the jets as part of its efforts to modernize the air force and replace its aging Russian-made aircraft. The fighter-plane contest is the largest in 15 years, according to Boeing, and marks the first opportunity for U.S. companies to break into India’s defense market.
Lockheed’s F-16 is competing in the fighter contest against Chicago-based Boeing’s F/A-18 E/F Super Hornet; Russia’s MiG-35; Saab AB’s Gripen; France’s Rafale made by Dassault Aviation SA; and the Eurofighter Typhoon, a joint venture of Airbus SAS, BAE and Italy’s Finmeccanica SpA.
10/02/09 Vipin V. Nair/Bloomberg

How Computer Keyboards Work? What is a computer keyboard? How computer keyboard functions?

2009-01-24T01:35:00.000-08:00

When you look at all the extras and options that are available for new computer keyboards, it can be hard to believe that their original design came from mechanical typewriters that didn't even use electricity. Now, you can buy ergonomic keyboards that bear little resemblance to flat, rectangular models with ordinary square keys. Some flashier models light up, roll up or fold up, and others offer options for programming your own commands and shortcuts.

Computer Keyboard Image Gallery

An average Windows keyboard.
See more keyboard pictures.

But no matter how many bells and whistles they offer, most keyboards operate using similar technology. They use switches and circuits to translate a person's keystrokes into a signal a computer can understand. In this article we will explore keyboard technology along with different key layouts, options and designs.

Keyboard Basics

A keyboard's primary function is to act as an input device. Using a keyboard, a person can type a document, use keystroke shortcuts, access menus, play games and perform a variety of other tasks. Keyboards can have different keys depending on the manufacturer, the operating system they're designed for, and whether they are attached to a desktop computer or part of a laptop. But for the most part, these keys, also called keycaps, are the same size and shape from keyboard to keyboard. They're also placed at a similar distance from one another in a similar pattern, no matter what language or alphabet the keys represent.

Most keyboards have between 80 and 110 keys, including:

Typing keys
A numeric keypad
Function keys
Control keys

The typing keys include the letters of the alphabet, generally laid out in the same pattern used for typewriters. According to legend, this layout, known as QWERTY for its first six letters, helped keep mechanical typewriters' metal arms from colliding and jamming as people typed. Some people question this story – whether it’s true or not, the QWERTY pattern had long been a standard by the time computer keyboards came around.

Photo courtesy HSW Shopper
This Logitech wireless keyboard uses a QWERTY layout.

Keyboards can also use a variety of other typing key arrangements. The most widely known is Dvorak, named for its creator, August Dvorak. The Dvorak layout places all of the vowels on the left side of the keyboard and the most common consonants on the right. The most commonly used letters are all found along the home row. The home row is the main row where you place your fingers when you begin typing. People who prefer the Dvorak layout say it increases their typing speed and reduces fatigue. Other layouts include ABCDE, XPeRT, QWERTZ and AZERTY. Each is named for the first keys in the pattern. The QWERTZ and AZERTY arrangements are commonly used in Europe.

The numeric keypad is a more recent addition to the computer keyboard. As the use of computers in business environments increased, so did the need for speedy data entry. Since a large part of the data was numbers, a set of 17 keys, arranged in the same configuration found on adding machines and calculators, was added to the keyboard.

The Apple keyboard's control keys include the "Command" key.

In 1986, IBM further extended the basic keyboard with the addition of function and controloperating systems can assign specific commands to the function keys. Control keys provide cursor and screen control. Four arrow keys arranged in an inverted Tscreen in small increments. keys. Applications and formation between the typing keys and numeric keypad move the cursor on the

Photo courtesy www.artlebedev.com
Optimus keyboard OLED arrow keys

Other common control keys include:

Home
End
Insert
Delete
Page Up
Page Down
Control (Ctrl)
Alternate (Alt)
Escape (Esc)

Photo courtesy www.artlebedev.com
This Optimus keyboard has programmable hot keys.

The Windows keyboard adds some extra control keys: two Windows or Start keys, and an Application key. Apple keyboards, on the other hand, have Command (also known as "Apple") keys. A keyboard developed for Linux users features Linux-specific hot keys, including one marked with "Tux" the penguin -- the Linux logo/mascot.

Photo courtesy www.artlebedev.com
Optimus keyboard OLED Windows key

Inside the Keyboard

A keyboard is a lot like a miniature computer. It has its own processor and circuitry that carries information to and from that processor. A large part of this circuitry makes up the key matrix.

The microprocessor and controller circuitry of a keyboard

The key matrix is a grid of circuits underneath the keys. In all keyboards (except for capacitive models, which we'll discuss in the next section), each circuit is broken at a point below each key. When you press a key, it presses a switch, completing the circuit and allowing a tiny amount of current to flow through. The mechanical action of the switch causes some vibration, called bounce, which the processor filters out. If you press and hold a key, the processor recognizes it as the equivalent of pressing a key repeatedly.

When the processor finds a circuit that is closed, it compares the location of that circuit on the key matrix to the character map in its read-only memory (ROM). A character map is basically a comparison chart or lookup table. It tells the processor the position of each key in the matrix and what each keystroke or combination of keystrokes represents. For example, the character map lets the processor know that pressing the a key by itself corresponds to a small letter "a," but the Shift and a keys pressed together correspond to a capital "A."

The key matrix

A computer can also use separate character maps, overriding the one found in the keyboard. This can be useful if a person is typing in a language that uses letters that don't have English equivalents on a keyboard with English letters. People can also set their computers to interpret their keystrokes as though they were typing on a Dvorak keyboard even though their actual keys are arranged in a QWERTY layout. In addition, operating systems and applications have keyboard accessibility settings that let people change their keyboard's behavior to adapt to disabilities.

Keyboard Switches

Keyboards use a variety of switch technologies. Capacitive switches are considered to be non-mechanical because they do not physically complete a circuit like most other keyboard technologies. Instead, current constantly flows through all parts of the key matrix. Each key is spring-loaded and has a tiny plate attached to the bottom of it. When you press a key, it moves this plate closer to the plate below it. As the two plates move closer together, the amount of current flowing through the matrix changes. The processor detects the change and interprets it as a key press for that location. Capacitive switch keyboards are expensive, but they have a longer life than any other keyboard. Also, they do not have problems with bounce since the two surfaces never come into actual contact.

All of the other types of switches used in keyboards are mechanical in nature. Each provides a different level of audible and tactile response -- the sounds and sensations that typing creates. Mechanical key switches include:

Rubber dome
Membrane
Metal contact
Foam element

This keyboard uses rubber dome switches.

Rubber dome switches are very common. They use small, flexible rubber domes, each with a hard carbon center. When you press a key, a plunger on the bottom of the key pushes down against the dome, and the carbon center presses against a hard, flat surface beneath the key matrix. As long as the key is held, the carbon center completes the circuit. When the key is released, the rubber dome springs back to its original shape, forcing the key back up to its at-rest position. Rubber dome switch keyboards are inexpensive, have pretty good tactile response and are fairly resistant to spills and corrosion because of the rubber layer covering the key matrix.

Rather than having a switch for each key, membrane keyboards use a continuous membrane that stretches from one end to another. A pattern printed in the membrane completes the circuit when you press a key. Some membrane keyboards use a flat surface printed with representations of each key rather than keycaps. Membrane keyboards don't have good tactile response, and without additional mechanical components they don't make the clicking sound that some people like to hear when they're typing. However, they're generally inexpensive to make.

Metal contact and foam element keyboards are increasingly less common. Metal contact switches simply have a spring-loaded key with a strip of metal on the bottom of the plunger. When the key is pressed, the metal strip connects the two parts of the circuit. The foam element switch is basically the same design but with a small piece of spongy foam between the bottom of the plunger and the metal strip, providing a better tactile response. Both technologies have good tactile response, make satisfyingly audible "clicks," and are inexpensive to produce. The problem is that the contacts tend to wear out or corrode faster than on keyboards that use other technologies. Also, there is no barrier that prevents dust or liquids from coming in direct contact with the circuitry of the key matrix.

Different manufacturers have used these standard technologies, and a few others, to create a wide range of non-traditional keyboards. We'll take a look at some of these non-traditional keyboards in the next section.

Non-Traditional Keyboards

A lot of modifications to the traditional keyboard design are an attempt to make them safer or easier to use. For example, some people have associated increased keyboard use with repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome, although scientific studies have produced conflicting results. Ergonomic keyboard designs are intended to keep a person's hands in a more natural position while typing in an attempt to prevent injuries. While these keyboards can certainly keep people from holding their hands in a "praying mantis" position, studies disagree on whether they actually prevent injury.

Photo courtesy www.safetype.com
The SafeType keyboard places the two halves of the keyboard perpendicular to the desk surface.

The simplest ergonomic keyboards look like traditional keyboards that have been divided down the middle, keeping a person's hands farther apart and aligning the wrists with the forearms. More complex designs place the two halves of the keyboard at varying angles to one another and to the surface on which the keyboard rests. Some go even further, placing the two halves of the keyboard on the armrests of chairs or making them completely perpendicular to the desk surface. Others, like the Datahand, don't look much like keyboards at all.

Photo courtesy www.saitek.com
Saitek Truview backlit keyboard buttons

Some modifications, while not necessarily ergonomic, are designed to make keyboards more portable, more versatile or just cooler:

Das Keyboard is a completely black keyboard with weighted keys that require more pressure from a person's strongest fingers and less pressure from the weaker ones.
The Virtual Laser Keyboard projects a representation of a keyboard onto a flat surface. When used successfully, a person's fingers pass through the beam of infrared light above the projected surface, and a sensor interprets it as a keystroke.
The True-touch Roll-up keyboard is flexible and can be rolled up to fit in a backpack or bag.

Blue backlit keyboard 'on'

Blue backlit keyboard 'off'
Illuminated keyboards, like the Ion Illuminated Keyboard, use light-emitting diodes or electroluminescent film to send light through the keys or the spaces between keys.

Photo courtesy www.artlebedev.com
Optimus keyboard programmable hot keys
The Optimus keyboard has organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) in the keys. Users can change what letter, command or action each key represents, and the OLED can change to display the new information.

Photo courtesy www.artlebedev.com
This Optimus keyboard is set for keystrokes used to play Quake.

With the exception of the Virtual Laser Keyboard, which has its own sensing system, each of these keyboards uses the same type of technology as traditional models do to communicate with the computer. We'll look at that technology next.

From the Keyboard to the Computer

As you type, the processor in the keyboard analyzes the key matrix and determines what characters to send to the computer. It maintains these characters in its memory buffer and then sends the data.

A PS/2 type keyboard connector.

Many keyboards connect to the computer through a cable with a PS/2 or USB (Universal Serial Bus) connector. Laptops use internal connectors. Regardless of which type of connector is used, the cable must carry power to the keyboard, and it must carry signals from the keyboard back to the computer.

Wireless keyboards, on the other hand, connect to the computer through infrared (IR), radio frequency (RF) or Bluetooth connections. IR and RF connections are similar to what you'd find in a remote control. Regardless of which sort of signal they use, wireless keyboards require a receiver, either built in or plugged in to the USB port, to communicate with the computer. Since they don't have a physical connection to the computer, wireless keyboards have an AC power connection or use batteries for power.

Microsoft wireless keyboard

This Microsoft wireless keyboard is battery-powered.

Whether it's through a cable or wireless, the signal from the keyboard is monitored by the computer's keyboard controller. This is an integrated circuit (IC) that processes all of the data that comes from the keyboard and forwards it to the operating system. When the operating system (OS) is notified that there is data from the keyboard, it checks to see if the keyboard data is a system level command. A good example of this is Ctrl-Alt-Delete on a Windows computer, which reboots the system. Then, the OS passes the keyboard data on to the current application.

The application determines whether the keyboard data is a command, like Alt-f, which opens the File menu in a Windows application. If the data is not a command, the application accepts it as content, which can be anything from typing a document to entering a URL to performing a calculation. If the current application does not accept keyboard data, it simply ignores the information. This whole process, from pressing the key to entering content into an application, happens almost instantaneously.

What is computer mouse? How computer mouse works? What is computer mice? How computer mice works?

2009-01-24T01:27:00.000-08:00

Mice first broke onto the public stage with the introduction of the Apple Macintosh in 1984, and since then they have helped to completely redefine the way we use computers.

Every day of your computing life, you reach out for your mouse whenever you want to move your cursor or activate something. Your mouse senses your motion and your clicks and sends them to the computer so it can respond appropriately.

In this article we'll take the cover off of this important part of the human-machine interface and see exactly what makes it tick.

Evolution of the Computer Mouse

It is amazing how simple and effective a mouse is, and it is also amazing how long it took mice to become a part of everyday life. Given that people naturally point at things -- usually before they speak -- it is surprising that it took so long for a good pointing device to develop. Although originally conceived in the 1960s, a couple of decades passed before mice became mainstream.

In the beginning, there was no need to point because computers used crude interfaces like teletype machines or punch cards for data entry. The early text terminals did nothing more than emulate a teletype (using the screen to replace paper), so it was many years (well into the 1960s and early 1970s) before arrow keys were found on most terminals. Full screen editors were the first things to take real advantage of the cursor keys, and they offered humans the first way to point.

Light pens were used on a variety of machines as a pointing device for many years, and graphics tablets, joy sticks and various other devices were also popular in the 1970s. None of these really took off as the pointing device of choice, however.

When the mouse hit the scene -- attached to the Mac, it was an immediate success. There is something about it that is completely natural. Compared to a graphics tablet, mice are extremely inexpensive and they take up very little desk space. In the PC world, mice took longer to gain ground, mainly because of a lack of support in the operating system. Once Windows 3.1 made Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) a standard, the mouse became the PC-human interface of choice very quickly.

Inside a Mouse

The main goal of any mouse is to translate the motion of your hand into signals that the computer can use. Let's take a look inside a track-ball mouse to see how it works:

The guts of a mouse

A ball inside the mouse touches the desktop and rolls when the mouse moves.

The underside of the mouse's logic board: The exposed portion of the ball touches the desktop.
Two rollers inside the mouse touch the ball. One of the rollers is oriented so that it detects motion in the X direction, and the other is oriented 90 degrees to the first roller so it detects motion in the Y direction. When the ball rotates, one or both of these rollers rotate as well. The following image shows the two white rollers on this mouse:

The rollers that touch the ball and detect X and Y motion
The rollers each connect to a shaft, and the shaft spins a disk with holes in it. When a roller rolls, its shaft and disk spin. The following image shows the disk:

A typical optical encoding disk: This disk has 36 holes around its outer edge.
On either side of the disk there is an infrared LED and an infrared sensor. The holes in the disk break the beam of light coming from the LED so that the infrared sensor sees pulses of light. The rate of the pulsing is directly related to the speed of the mouse and the distance it travels.

A close-up of one of the optical encoders that track mouse motion: There is an infrared LED (clear) on one side of the disk and an infrared sensor (red) on the other.
An on-board processor chip reads the pulses from the infrared sensors and turns them into binary data that the computer can understand. The chip sends the binary data to the computer through the mouse's cord.

The logic section of a mouse is dominated by an encoder chip, a small processor that reads the pulses coming from the infrared sensors and turns them into bytes sent to the computer. You can also see the two buttons that detect clicks (on either side of the wire connector).

In this optomechanical arrangement, the disk moves mechanically, and an optical system counts pulses of light. On this mouse, the ball is 21 mm in diameter. The roller is 7 mm in diameter. The encoding disk has 36 holes. So if the mouse moves 25.4 mm (1 inch), the encoder chip detects 41 pulses of light.

You might have noticed that each encoder disk has two infrared LEDs and two infrared sensors, one on each side of the disk (so there are four LED/sensor pairs inside a mouse). This arrangement allows the processor to detect the disk's direction of rotation. There is a piece of plastic with a small, precisely located hole that sits between the encoder disk and each infrared sensor. It is visible in this photo:

A close-up of one of the optical encoders that track mouse motion: Note the piece of plastic between the infrared sensor (red) and the encoding disk.

This piece of plastic provides a window through which the infrared sensor can "see." The window on one side of the disk is located slightly higher than it is on the other -- one-half the height of one of the holes in the encoder disk, to be exact. That difference causes the two infrared sensors to see pulses of light at slightly different times. There are times when one of the sensors will see a pulse of light when the other does not, and vice versa.

Connecting Computer Mice

Most mice on the market today use a USB connector to attach to your computer. USB is a standard way to connect all kinds of peripherals to your computer, including printers, digital cameras, keyboards and mice. See How USB Ports Work for more information about this technology.

2000 HowStuffWorks
A typical PS/2 connector.

Some older mice, many of which are still in use today, have a PS/2 type connector. Instead of a PS/2 connector, a few other older mice use a serial type of connector to attach to a computer. See How Serial Ports Work for more information.

Optical Mice

Back to the Drawing Board

Another type of optical mouse has been around for over a decade. The original optical-mouse technology bounced a focused beam of light off a highly-reflective mouse pad onto a sensor. The mouse pad had a grid of dark lines. Each time the mouse was moved, the beam of light was interrupted by the grid. Whenever the light was interrupted, the sensor sent a signal to the computer and the cursor moved a corresponding amount.

This kind of optical mouse was difficult to use, requiring that you hold it at precisely the right angle to ensure that the light beam and sensor aligned. Also, damage to or loss of the mouse pad rendered the mouse useless until a replacement pad was purchased. Today's optical mice are far more user-friendly and reliable.

Developed by Agilent Technologies and introduced to the world in late 1999, the optical mouse actually uses a tiny camera to take thousands of pictures every second.

Able to work on almost any surface without a mouse pad, most optical mice use a small, red light-emitting diode (LED) that bounces light off that surface onto a complimentary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor. In addition to LEDs, a recent innovation are laser-based optical mice that detect more surface details compared to LED technology. This results in the ability to use a laser-based optical mouse on even more surfaces than an LED mouse.

Here's how the sensor and other parts of an optical mouse work together:

The CMOS sensor sends each image to a digital signal processor (DSP) for analysis.
The DSP detects patterns in the images and examines how the patterns have moved since the previous image.
Based on the change in patterns over a sequence of images, the DSP determines how far the mouse has moved and sends the corresponding coordinates to the computer.
The computer moves the cursor on the screen based on the coordinates received from the mouse. This happens hundreds of times each second, making the cursor appear to move very smoothly.

In this photo, you can see the sensor on the bottom of the mouse.

Optical mice have several benefits over track-ball mice:

No moving parts means less wear and a lower chance of failure.
There's no way for dirt to get inside the mouse and interfere with the tracking sensors.
Increased tracking resolution means a smoother response.
They don't require a special surface, such as a mouse pad.

Apple has transformed its optical mouse into a modern work of art.

Optical Mouse Accuracy

A number of factors affect the accuracy of an optical mouse. One of the most important aspects is resolution. The resolution is the number of pixels per inch that the optical sensor and focusing lens "see" when you move the mouse. Resolution is expressed as dots per inch (dpi). The higher the resolution, the more sensitive the mouse is and the less you need to move it to obtain a response.

Most mice have a resolution of 400 or 800 dpi. However, mice designed for playing electronic games can offer as much as 1600 dpi resolution. Some gaming mice also allow you to decrease the dpi on the fly to make the mouse less sensitive in situations when you need to make smaller, slower movements.

Historically, corded mice have been more responsive than wireless mice. This fact is changing, however, with the advent of improvements in wireless technologies and optical sensors. Other factors that affect quality include:

Size of the optical sensor -- larger is generally better, assuming the other mouse components can handle the larger size. Sizes range from 16 x 16 pixels to 30 x 30 pixels.
Refresh rate -- it is how often the sensor samples images as you move the mouse. Faster is generally better, assuming the other mouse components can process them. Rates range from 1500 to 6000 samples per second.
Image processing rate -- is a combination of the size of the optical sensor and the refresh rate. Again, faster is better and rates range from 0.486 to 5.8 megapixels per second.
Maximum speed -- is the maximum speed that you can move the mouse and obtain accurate tracking. Faster is better and rates range from 16 to 40 inches per second.

Wireless Mice

Most wireless mice use radio frequency (RF) technology to communicate information to your computer. Being radio-based, RF devices require two main components: a transmitter and a receiver. Here's how it works:

The transmitter is housed in the mouse. It sends an electromagnetic (radio) signal that encodes the information about the mouse's movements and the buttons you click.
The receiver, which is connected to your computer, accepts the signal, decodes it and passes it on to the mouse driver software and your computer's operating system.
The receiver can be a separate device that plugs into your computer, a special card that you place in an expansion slot, or a built-in component.

Photo courtesy Logitech
MX900 and docking station

Many electronic devices use radio frequencies to communicate. Examples include cellular phones, wireless networks, and garage door openers. To communicate without conflicts, different types of devices have been assigned different frequencies. Newer cell phones use a frequency of 900 megahertz, garage door openers operate at a frequency of 40 megahertz, and 802.11b/g wireless networks operate at 2.4 gigahertz. Megahertz (MHz) means "one million cycles per second," so "900 megahertz" means that there are 900 million electromagnetic waves per second. Gigahertz (GHz) means "one billion cycles per second." To learn more about RF and frequencies, see How the Radio Spectrum Works.

Unlike infrared technology, which is commonly used for short-range wireless communications such as television remote controls, RF devices do not need a clear line of sight between the transmitter (mouse) and receiver. Just like other types of devices that use radio waves to communicate, a wireless mouse signal can pass through barriers such as a desk or your monitor.

RF technology provides a number of additional benefits for wireless mice. These include:

RF transmitters require low power and can run on batteries
RF components are inexpensive
RF components are light weight

As with most mice on the market today, wireless mice use optical sensor technology rather than the earlier track-ball system. Optical technology improves accuracy and lets you use the wireless mouse on almost any surface -- an important feature when you're not tied to your computer by a cord.

Pairing and Security
In order for the transmitter in the mouse to communicate with its receiver, they must be paired. This means that both devices are operating at the same frequency on the same channel using a common identification code. A channel is simply a specific frequency and code. The purpose of pairing is to filter out interference from other sources and RF devices.

Pairing methods vary, depending on the mouse manufacturer. Some devices come pre-paired. Others use methods such as a pairing sequence that occurs automatically, when you push specific buttons, or when you turn a dial on the receiver and/or mouse.

To protect the information your mouse transmits to the receiver, most wireless mice include an encryption scheme to encode data into an unreadable format. Some devices also use a frequency hopping method, which causes the mouse and receiver to automatically change frequencies using a predetermined pattern. This provides additional protection from interference and eavesdropping.

Bluetooth Mice

One of the RF technologies that wireless mice commonly use is Bluetooth. Bluetooth technology wirelessly connects peripherals such as printers, headsets, keyboards and mice to Bluetooth-enabled devices such as computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs). Because a Bluetooth receiver can accommodate multiple Bluetooth peripherals at one time, Bluetooth is also known as a personal area network (PAN). Bluetooth devices have a range of about 33 feet (10 meters).

Bluetooth operates in the 2.4 GHz range using RF technology. It avoids interference among multiple Bluetooth peripherals through a technique called spread-spectrum frequency hopping. WiFi devices such as 802.11b/g wireless networks also operate in the 2.4 GHz range, as do some cordless telephonescordless telephones and microwave ovens. Version 1.2 of Bluetooth provides adaptive frequency hopping (AFH), which is an enhanced frequency-hopping technology designed to avoid interference with other 2.4 GHz communications.

Why is it called Bluetooth? Harald Bluetooth was king of Denmark in the late 900s. He managed to unite Denmark and part of Norway into a single kingdom then introduced Christianity into Denmark. He left a large monument, the Jelling rune stone, in memory of his parents. He was killed in 986 during a battle with his son, Svend Forkbeard. Choosing this name for the standard indicates how important companies from the Baltic region (nations including Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland) are to the communications industry, even if it says little about the way the technology works.

RF Mice

The other common type of wireless mouse is an RF device that operates at 27 MHz and has a range of about 6 feet (2 meters). More recently, 2.4 GHz RF mice have hit the market with the advantage of a longer range -- about 33 feet (10 meters) and faster transmissions with less interference. Multiple RF mice in one room can result in cross-talk, which means that the receiver inadvertently picks up the transmissions from the wrong mouse. Pairing and multiple channels help to avoid this problem.

Typically, the RF receiver plugs into a USB port and does not accept any peripherals other than the mouse (and perhaps a keyboard, if sold with the mouse). Some portable models designed for use with notebook computers come with a compact receiver that can be stored in a slot inside the mouse when not in use.

Mouse Tip If you want to use both a wireless RF mouse and keyboard, buy them together. Pairing and transmission technology is unique to each manufacturer and device. If you purchase an RF wireless keyboard and mouse separately, you may have to connect a receiver for each one to your PC.

Mouse Innovations

Working Together

Some PC keyboards and mice are designed to work together to give you more options for input. For example, the Logitech Cordless Desktop LX700 comes with a keyboard that has scroll, pan and zoom capabilities. The mouse includes the same features, so that you can use either to perform these functions.

As with many computer-related devices, mice are being combined with other gadgets and technologies to create improved and multipurpose devices. Examples include multi-media mice, combination mice/remote controls, gaming mice, biometric mice, tilting wheel mice and motion-based mice. To learn more about innovations in mouse technology, let's start with multi-media mice and combination mice/remote controls.

Multi-Media Mouse and Combination Mouse/Remote

These types of mice are used with multimedia systems such as the Windows XP Media Center Edition computers. Some combine features of a mouse with additional buttons (such as play, pause, forward, back and volume) for controlling media. Others resemble a television/media player remote control with added features for mousing. Remote controls generally use infrared sensors but some use a combination of infrared and RF technology for greater range.

Gaming Mice
Gaming mice are high-precision, optical mice designed for use with PCs and game controllers. Features may include:

Multiple buttons for added flexibility and functions such as adjusting dpi rates on the fly
Wireless connectivity and an optical sensor
Motion feedback and two-way communication

Motion-Based Mice
Yet another innovation in mouse technology is motion-based control. With this feature, you control the mouse pointer by waving the mouse in the air.

The technology patented by one manufacturer, Gyration, incorporates miniature gyroscopes to track the motion of the mouse as you wave it in the air. It uses an electromagnetic transducer and sensors to detect rotation in two axes at the same time. The mouse operates on the principle of the Coriolis Effect, which is the apparent turning of an object that's moving in relation to another rotating object. The device and accompanying software converts the mouse movements into movements on the computer's screen. The mice also include an optical sensor for use on a desktop.

Biometric Mice

Biometric mice add security to your computer system by permitting only authorized users to control the mouse and access the computer. Protection is accomplished with an integrated fingerprint reader either in the receiver or the mouse. This feature enhances security and adds convenience because you can use your fingerprint rather than passwords for a secure login.

Photo courtesy Microsoft Corporation
The Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer with Fingerprint Reader is a biometric mouse.

To use the biometric feature, a software program that comes with the mouse registers fingerprints and stores information about corresponding authorized users. Some software programs also let you encrypt and decrypt files.

Tilting Scroll Wheel

A more recent innovation in mouse scrolling is a tilting scroll wheel that allows you to scroll onscreen both horizontally (left/right) and vertically (up/down). The ability to scroll both ways is handy when you are viewing wide documents like a Web page or spreadsheet.

To navigate both horizontally and vertically, the scroll wheel is positioned on a combination fulcrum and lever. This is the design used by the Logitech Cordless Click! Plus mouse.

Photo courtesy Logitech
Logitech Cordless Click! Plus

Another method for vertical and horizontal scrolling is a touch scroll panel that responds to your finger sliding horizontally and vertically, as employed by the Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse.

Photo courtesy Logitech
Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse

How the Xynergi Keyboard Works? What is Xynergi Keyboard?

2009-01-24T01:21:00.000-08:00

In September 2007, an Australia-based company called Fairlight introduced a new digital audio production device named Xynergi. Gadget blogs covered the story and called Xynergi a $28,000 keyboard. Such labels are misleading. In reality, identifying Xynergi as a $28,000 keyboard is like saying the audio system inside a Bentley is a $250,000 radio -- it misses the big picture.

The Xynergi keyboard is part of a desktop media production center package. Fairlight designed Xynergi to meet the needs of small, professional media editing studios. With Xynergi, engineers can capture audio, manipulate individual tracks, add effects, mix multiple tracks together and edit video files. While the device's complexity and price tag mean the average consumer isn't going to buy it, Xynergi might be a good choice for someone with a small recording studio or media companies that need an interface that will let them edit audio and video quickly.

Computer Accessories Image Gallery

Photo courtesy Fairlight
The Xynergi Keyboard and CC-1 Card.
See more pictures of computer accessories.

The Xynergi keyboard looks like a large computer keyboard with several extra keys, a few knobs, a dial called a jog wheel and a rectangular color monitor above the main array of keys. Fairlight calls the monitor and the surrounding controls the pad. Xynergi's main key array is in the standard QWERTY layout with a number pad on the right. Engineers use the knobs, keys and jog wheel to manipulate digital audio and video files.

If you've ever seen a professional audio mixing console or video editing control system, you know that there are many more switches, knobs and toggles than you'll find on the Xynergi keyboard. In order to replicate the functions that these large consoles have, Fairlight came up with a clever idea -- self-labeling keys. These are keys that can change functions and key labels depending on what you're trying to do. Each key is a small computer monitor that can display different characters, including letters, symbols and words. Xynergi has an "animate" feature that makes keys flash on and off or change colors during specific tasks. The keys can even display video. As engineers switch from one operating mode to another (for example, moving from a word processing mode to an audio mixing mode), the key labels change and the keys themselves map to new functions.

In this article, we'll take a look at what makes Xynergi tick, examine some of Xynergi's functions and learn more about Fairlight's market strategy for Xynergi, including where you can pick one up and how much it'll set you back.

Xynergi Components

The real source of Xynergi's amazing functionality is Fairlight's CC-1 card. "CC" stands for Crystal Core, Fairlight's processing platform for its audio production hardware. The CC-1 is both a microprocessor and a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCI-Express) card. To use a Xynergi device, an engineer has to first connect it to a PC using the CC-1 card. He or she would need to install the card in one of the computer's expansion slots, which connects the card to the computer's motherboard.

It's Easy Being GreenComputer Processing Units (CPUs) coupled with FPGA devices are much faster and more efficient than a CPU working alone. FPGA devices have a much lower power requirement than a CPU. Fairlight claims that the CC-1 generates 98 percent less heat than a normal digital signal processor (DSP) and requires only 12 watts of electricity (as opposed to 600 watts for a DSP). Engineers can reduce their studios' carbon footprint by using more efficient electronics like the Xynergi system.

The CC-1 is a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) device. An FPGA device can contain thousands of logic gates, which are the basic building blocks of digital circuits (to learn more about logic gates, head to our article on How Boolean Logic Works). Fairlight designed the CC-1 to act as a processor. All audio production functions run through the CC-1, not the host computer's CPU. This means that the PC's processing power is available for other programming tasks. In the past, PC-based audio editing devices required a computer almost entirely dedicated to audio production, because audio processing demands are so high. Since the CC-1 handles this load on its own, you can install it on a PC and still run other processes while you edit and mix audio and video tracks.

Photo courtesy Fairlight
The Xynergi Keyboard in three different application modes.

Fairlight offers four different configurations for the Xynergi system -- every version can perform the same basic tasks, but the higher-end versions have more processing capability. The top-of-the-line system is the Xynergi MPC-230F, which has 230 processing channels, 96 concurrent recording tracks and 192 concurrent playback tracks. In other words, Xynergi engineers can record, edit, mix and play back dozens of individual audio tracks to make rich, complex master recordings.

Xynergi systems also include an I/O toolbox called an SX-20. The SX-20 has two preamps, which are outputs that boost the power of a signal before sending the signal to another component (to learn more, read our article on How Amplifiers Work). The system also has two analog inputs, 12 analog outputs, four digital inputs and eight digital outputs, which allow the engineer to connect the system to other components, including microphones, instruments and speakers.

The Xynergi media production center runs on proprietary Fairlight production software. Xynergi can create and edit most media file formats, but its interactive keyboard isn't designed to work with other video and audio production software.

Xynergi's hardware and software give the system amazing capabilities. In the next section, we'll learn more about some of Xynergi's functions.

Xynergi Functions

Xynergi's interactive keyboard has application awareness, which means the keys display only the symbols and commands appropriate for the application currently in use. If an engineer needs to jot some notes down in Microsoft Word, for example, he or she can push a key on the Xynergi keyboard to activate Word. The Xynergi's keyboard then switches to a QWERTY keyboard. When finished, the engineer can push the Edit key to return to Xynergi's editing software, and the keys will change again.

Photo courtesy Fairlight
An audio engineer uses Xynergi to manipulate tracks.

Because every key is actually a small color monitor, keys change colors to indicate active functions. For example, if an engineer wants to work on a specific track, he or she can push a button mapped to that track. The key will change from blue to red, indicating the track is active and ready for mixing or editing applications. If the engineer assigns a name to a specific track, the name will appear on the key mapped to that track.

Engineers use the jog wheel whenever they need to scan through an audio track quickly. Rotating the jog wheel clockwise or counterclockwise advances or reverses the track, respectively. This feature also allows engineers to designate specific sections of a track for editing -- the engineer uses the wheel to mark the beginning and end of a range within a track. The engineer can then add effects to the marked range without affecting the rest of the recording.

Fairlight calls the area that includes the color screen and the surrounding buttons and knobs the pad. The screen displays information about audio tracks, giving users a visual representation of the digital file. It can show the name of an audio track, bars that indicate the distribution of the track's sound across different speaker channels, an equalizer and a time code display. The buttons and knobs surrounding the screen allow an engineer to manipulate the track or set Xynergi in its automated editor mode.

What's the Frequency, Kenneth?Engineers can adjust eight bands of frequencies in each audio channel using Xynergi's equalizer. Lower frequencies, measured in units called hertz, correspond to sounds with a lower pitch. The equalizer lets engineers adjust the tone of an audio track by increasing or decreasing the amplitude of each band of frequencies. To learn more about sound frequencies, read our article on How Analog and Digital Recording Works.

Here are just a few of Xynergi's functions:

Recording tracks: Xynergi can record incoming audio. Audio can come from other digital devices or straight from an instrument or microphone feed.
Editing tracks: Engineers can edit audio tracks extensively, adding in effects like echo or reverberation, looping sections of track and adjusting frequency equalization.
Mixing tracks: Once an engineer has his or her audio tracks adjusted just right, he or she can mix it with other tracks, eventually creating a complex master track. Xynergi can even take over mixing duties with an automated mixing program.
Playback: Xynergi can play audio tracks, sending the signal to speakers connected to the media center. Engineers can isolate a specific speaker to make sure the right level of sound is reaching it, or listen to all the speakers together to create a surround sound effect.

The Xynergi system includes the same functions you'd find on a large audio or video editing console, but has a price tag that's only a fraction of what those systems cost.

Xynergi Marketing

While Fairlight estimated Xynergi's retail price at 20,000 euros, which converts to more than $29,000, its actual retail price isn't quite so high. Guitar Center Pro is North America's only distributor of the Xynergi Media Production Center, and its price is only $22,973. For this price, you get the keyboard, a CC-1 card, an SX-20 I/O toolbox and the Xynergi software toolkit. You'll still need a PC (Xynergi is not Mac compatible), monitors, speakers and other input and output devices -- the Xynergi Media Production Center doesn't include them.

David Ellis, morgueFile
A Xynergi system might seem expensive, but compared to the cost of equipment in this traditional
audio engineering studio, it's a real bargain.

After purchasing a Xynergi system, you might find yourself overwhelmed with its functions. Fortunately, Fairlight foresaw this very problem and included an interactive help system called Xplain. To use the Xplain system, you hold down the Xplain button on the keyboard and then press any other key to find out what it does and how to use it. A corresponding help message appears on the pad's screen. You can do this with any button, and the system will helpfully tell you what the function does.

Some buttons map to shortcuts to other programs. For example, there's a button for Internet Explorer. Pushing that button will launch IE and the keyboard will switch to the QWERTY layout. Users can map keys to specific functions not included in Xynergi's package, though the system may not be able to use its application awareness feature for every program.

Fairlight first began to ship the Xynergi platform out to customers and retailers in September 2007. The first business in the United States to purchase the system was Buzzy's Recording, a studio based in Los Angeles. The company plans on using Xynergi for voice overs and automated dialogue replacement (ADR) [source: Fairlight]. Fairlight expects the system to gain popularity quickly within the audio and video editing industry.

Why are the keys arranged the way they are on a QWERTY keyboard? What is the reason the keys arranged the way they are on a QWERTY keyboard?

2009-01-24T01:19:00.000-08:00

In 1874 Remington & Sons manufactured the first commercial typewriter, called the Remington Number 1. This typewriter was designed by Christopher Sholes and used the "QWERTY" keyboard we are all familiar with.

Photodisc/Getty Images
The QWERTY layout is based on the keyboard design for the original typewriter.

This early typewriter used a mechanism with characters on the end of a bar. When a key was struck, a linkage would swing the bar into a tape coated with ink. When the character struck the tape, the impression of the character was transferred onto the paper, which was positioned behind the tape.

Sholes' original prototypes had a problem with the bars colliding with each other and jamming. So the story goes that he arranged the keys with the most common letters in hard to reach spots, to slow typists down and try to avoid this problem.

Whatever the reason for the QWERTY layout, it seems pretty unlikely that one of the first keyboard layouts invented would be perfect. The QWERTY keyboard is very different from the Dvorak keyboard layout. The Dvorak keyboard layout tries to minimize the distance traveled by the fingers. It also tries to make the typist alternate hands on consecutive letters as often as possible.

The Dvorak layout places all of the most commonly used letters in the home row so your fingers don't have to move at all to hit these keys. The left hand has all of the vowels and some consonants and the right hand has only consonants. So there are very few words in the English language that can be typed with only one hand on the Dvorak keyboard (two are "papaya" and "opaque"). Both "pumpkin" and "minimum" can be typed with one hand on a QWERTY keyboard -- give it a try.

This site shows the layout of the Dvorak keyboard. If I had typed this article on a Dvorak keyboard, my fingers would have traveled 30 meters versus the 54 meters they traveled on the QWERTY keyboard I use.

Some argue, however, the Dvorak keyboard is no more efficient than QWERTY. An independent study in 1956 showed that QWERTY typists and Dvorak typists had about the same rate of speed, and continued studies don't show a clear winner between the two [ref]. This may explain why QWERTY is still the standard.

If you want to see for yourself, you can switch your keyboard to a Dvorak configuration just by changing a setting on your computer's operating system. Depending on your keyboard, you may even be able to pry off the keys and rearrange them in the Dvorak layout.

What is Nehalem Microprocessor Microarchitecture? How the Nehalem Microprocessor Microarchitecture Works?

2009-01-24T01:10:00.000-08:00

Take the number two and double it and you've got four. Double it again and you've got eight. Continue this trend of doubling the previous product and within 10 rounds you're up to 1,024. By 20 rounds you've hit 1,048,576. This is called exponential growth. It's the principle behind one of the most important concepts in the evolution of electronics.

In 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore made an observation that has since dictated the direction of the semiconductor industry. Moore noted that the density of transistors on a chip doubled every year. That meant that every 12 months, chip manufacturers were finding ways to shrink transistor sizes so that twice as many could fit on a chip substrate.

Moore pointed out that the density of transistors on a chip and the cost of manufacturing chips were tied together. But the media -- and just about everybody else -- latched on to the idea that the microchip industry was developing at an exponential rate. Moore's observations and predictions morphed into a concept we call Moore's Law.

Over the years, people have tweaked Moore's Law to fit the parameters of chip development. At one point, the length of time between doubling the number of transistors on a chip increased to 18 months. Today, it's more like two years. That's still an impressive achievement considering that today's top microprocessors contain more than a billion transistors on a single chip.

Another way to look at Moore's Law is to say that the processing power of a microchip doubles in capacity every two years. That's almost the same as saying the number of transistors doubles -- microprocessors draw processing power from transistors. But another way to boost processor power is to find new ways to design chips so that they're more efficient.

This brings us back to Intel. Intel's philosophy is to follow a tick-tock strategy. The tick refers to creating new methods of building smaller transistors. The tock refers to maximizing the microprocessor's power and speed. The most recent Intel tick chip to hit the market (at the time of this writing) is the Penryn chip, which has transistors on the 45-nanometer scale. A nanometer is one-billionth the size of a meter -- to put that in the proper perspective, an average human hair is about 100,000 nanometers in diameter.

So what's the tock? That would be the new Core i7 microprocessor from Intel. It has transistors the same size as the Penryn's, but uses Intel's new Nehalem microarchitecture to increase power and speed. By following this tick-tock philosophy, Intel hopes to stay on target to meet the expectations of Moore's Law for several more years.

How does the Nehalem microprocessor use the same-sized transistors as the Penryn and yet get better results? Let's take a closer look at the microprocessor.

Nehalem Architecture

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, of Moore's Law fame.

You can look at the Nehalem microprocessor as a chip that has two main sections: a core and then the surrounding components called the un-core. The core of the microprocessor contains the following elements:

The processors, which do the actual number crunching. This can include anything from simple mathematical operations like adding and subtracting to much more complex functions.
A section devoted to out-of-order scheduling and retirement logic. This lets the microprocessor make calculations in a more efficient manner by tackling instructions in whichever order is fastest.
Cache memory takes up about one-third of the microprocessor's core. The cache allows the microprocessor to store information temporarily on the chip itself, decreasing the need to pull information from other parts of the computer. There are two sections of cache memory in the core called L1 and L2.
A branch prediction section on the core allows the microprocessor to anticipate functions based on previous input. By predicting functions, the microprocessor can work more efficiently. If it turns out the predictions are wrong, the chip can cease calculations and shift to perform the correct functions.
The rest of the core orders functions, decodes information and organizes data.

The un-core section has an additional 8 megabytes of memory contained in the L3 cache. The reason the L3 cache isn't in the core is because the Nehalem microprocessor is scalable and modular. That means Intel can build chips that have multiple cores. The cores all share the same L3 memory cache. That means multiple cores can work from the same information at the same time.

Why create scalable microprocessors? It's an elegant solution to a tricky problem -- building more processing power without having to reinvent the processor itself. In a way, it's like connecting several batteries in a series. Intel plans on building Nehalem microprocessors in dual, quad and eight-core configurations. Dual-core processors are good for small devices like smartphones. You're more likely to find a quad-core processor in a desktop or laptop computer. Intel designed the eight-core processors for machines like servers -- computers that handle heavy workloads.

Intel says that it will offer Nehalem microprocessors that incorporate a graphics processing unit (GPU) in the un-core. The GPU will function much the same way as a dedicated graphics card.

Nehalem and QuickPath

According to Intel, one of the most important developments in microarchitecture is an interconnect system the company calls QuickPath. QuickPath encompasses the connections between the processors, memory and other components.

In older Intel microrprocessors, commands come in through an input/output (I/O) controller to a centralized memory controller. The memory controller contacts a processor, which may request data. The memory controller retrieves this data from memory storage and sends it to the processor. The processor makes computations based upon that data and sends the results back through the memory controller to the I/O controller. As microprocessors become more complex with multiple processors on a single chip, this model becomes less efficient.

Using the old microarchitecture, Intel's chips had a memory bandwidth of up to 21 gigabytes per second. But microprocessor power was beginning to outpace the speed of data transmissions. QuickPath connectivity improves the memory bandwidth, allowing more information to pass each second.

QuickPath decentralizes and compartmentalizes communication between processors and memory. Instead of a centralized memory controller, each processor has its own memory controller, dedicated memory and cache memory. The processors communicate directly with the I/O controller. Commands come from the I/O controllers to the processors. Because each processor has a dedicated memory controller, memory and cache, there's no centralized bottleneck. Each processor can communicate with its dedicated memory at a speed of 32 gigabytes per second.

Processors also have point-to-point interconnections between each other. That means if one processor needs to access data within another processor's cache, it can send a request directly to the respective processor and get a response. Within each interconnection are distinct data pathways. Data can flow in both directions at the same time, speeding up data transfers. Transfer speeds between the multiple processors and the I/O controller can be up to 25.6 gigabytes per second.

IMC

Intel calls the memory controller, memory and cache configuration the Integrated Memory Controller, or IMC.

QuickPath also allows processors to take shortcuts when requesting information from other processors. Imagine a quad-core microprocessor with processors A, B, C and D. There are links between each processor. In older architectures, if processor A needed information from D, it would send a request. D would then send a request to processors B and C to make sure D had the most recent instance of that data. B and C would send the results to D, which would then be able to send information back to A. Each round of messages is called a hop -- this example had four hops.

QuickPath skips one of these steps. Processor A would send its initial request -- called a "snoop" -- to B, C and D, with D designated as the respondent. Processors B and C would send data to D. D would then send the result to A. This method skips one round of messages, so there are only three hops. It seems like a small improvement, but over billions of calculations it makes a big difference.

In addition, if one of the other processors had the information A requests, it can send the data directly to A. That reduces the hops to 2. QuickPath also packs information in more compact payloads.

Nehalem Branches and Loops

In a microprocessor, everything runs on clock cycles. Clock cycles are a way to measure how long a microprocessor takes to execute an instruction. Think of it as the number of instructions a microprocessor can execute in a second. The faster the clock speed, the more instructions the microprocessor will be able to handle per second.

One way microprocessors like the Core i7 try to increase efficiency is to predict future instructions based on old instructions. It's called branch prediction. When branch prediction works, the microprocessor completes instructions more efficiently. But if a prediction turns out to be inaccurate, the microprocessor has to compensate. This can mean wasted clock cycles, which translates into slower performance.

Nehalem has two branch target buffers (BTB). These buffers load instructions for the processors in anticipation of what the processors will need next. Assuming the prediction is correct, the processor doesn't need to call up information from the computer's memory. Nehalem's two buffers allow it to load more instructions, decreasing the lag time in the event of one set turning out to be incorrect.

Another efficiency improvement involves software loops. A loop is a string of instructions that the software repeats as it executes. It may come in regular intervals or intermittently. With loops, branch prediction becomes unnecessary -- one instance of a particular loop should execute the same way as every other. Intel designed Nehalem chips to recognize loops and handle them differently than other instructions.

Microprocessors without loop stream detection tend to have a hardware pipeline that begins with branch predictors, then moves to hardware designed to retrieve -- or fetch -- instructions, decode the instructions and execute them. Loop stream detection can identify repeated instructions, bypassing some of this process.

Intel used loop stream detection in its Penryn microprocessors. Penryn's loop stream detection hardware sits between the fetch and decode components of older microprocessors. When the Penryn chip's detector discovers a loop, the microprocessor can shut down the branch prediction and fetch components. This makes the pipeline shorter. But Nehalem goes a step farther. Nehalem's loop stream detector is at the end of the pipeline. When it sees a loop, the microprocessor can shut down everything except the loop stream detector, which sends out the appropriate instructions to a buffer.

The improvements to branch prediction and loop stream detection are all part of Intel's "tock" strategy. The transistors in Nehalem chips are the same size as Penryn's, but Nehalem's design makes more efficient use of the hardware.

Nehalem and Multithreading

As software applications become more sophisticated, sending instructions to processors becomes complicated. One way to simplify the process is through threading. Threading starts on the software side of the equation. Programmers build applications with instructions that processors can split into multiple streams or threads. Processors can work on individual threads of instructions, teaming up to complete a task. In the world of microprocessors, we call this parallelism because multiple processors work on parallel threads of data at the same time.

Nehalem's architecture allows each processor to handle two threads simultaneously. That means an eight-core Nehalem microprocessor can process 16 threads at the same time. This gives the Nehalem microprocessor the ability to process complex instructions more efficiently. According to Intel, the multithreading capability is more efficient than adding more processing cores to a microprocessor. Nehalem microprocessors should be able to meet the demands of sophisticated software like video editing programs or high-end video games.

Another benefit to multithreading is that the processor can handle multiple applications at the same time. This lets you work on complex programs while running other applications like virus scanners in the background. With older processors, these activities could cause a computer to slow down or even crash.

Rock Around the Overclock

Nehalem's turbo boost feature is similar to an old hacking trick called overclocking. To overclock a microprocessor is to increase its processing frequency beyond the normal parameters of the chip. Some gamers overclock the processors on their machines to get better performance when playing sophisticated video games. But overclocking isn't always a good idea -- it can cause chips to overheat.

Intel has incorporated an additional technology the company calls turbo boost within Nehalem's architecture. If the processor is running below its limits on power consumption, processing capacity and temperature levels, it can increase its clock frequency. This makes the active processors work faster. With older applications that have a single thread, the chip can increase clock speeds even more.

The turbo boost feature is dynamic -- it makes the Nehalem microprocessor work harder as the workload increases, provided the chip is within its operating parameters. As workload decreases, the microprocessor can work at its normal clock frequency. Because the microchip has a monitoring system, you don't have to worry about the chip overheating or working beyond its capacity. And when you aren't placing heavy demands on your processor, the chip conserves power.

Intel's Tick Tock

© Intel
Intel Executive Vice President Sean Maloney demonstrates the power of the Nehalem microarchitecture using a touchscreen interface at a press conference.

Developing a microprocessor takes years. While Intel unveiled Nehalem in 2008, the project was more than five years old at the time. That means even as people wait for an announced microchip to make its way into various electronic devices and computers, manufacturers like Intel are working on the next step in microprocessor evolution. They have to, if they want to keep up with Moore's Law.

The next step for Intel is another "tick" development. That means reducing transistors down to 32-nanometers wide. Producing one microprocessor with transistors that size is an amazing achievement. But what is even more daunting is finding a way to mass produce millions of chips with transistors that small in an efficient, reliable and cost-effective way.

The codename for the next Intel chip is Westmere. Westmere will use the same microarchitecture as Nehalem but will have the 32-nanometer transistors. That means Westmere will be more powerful than Nehalem. But that doesn't mean Westmere's architecture will make the most sense for a microprocessor with transistors that small. That will fall to the next "tock" microprocessor.

And the tock already has a name: Sandy Bridge. The Sandy Bridge microchip will have an architecture optimized for 32-nanometer transistors. It may take a couple of years before we see Sandy Bridge rolled out into the commercial market, but when it does it will likely be just as revolutionary as Nehalem is today.

Where will Intel go after that? It's hard to say. While transistors have shrunk down to sizes practically unimaginable a decade ago, we're getting close to hitting some fundamental laws of physics that could put a halt to rapid development. That's because as you work with smaller materials, you begin to enter the realm of quantum mechanics. The world of quantum mechanics can seem strange to someone only familiar with classic physics. Particles and energy behave in ways that seem counterintuitive from a classic perspective.

One of those behaviors is particularly problematic when it comes to microprocessors: electron tunneling. Normally, transistors can funnel electrons without much risk of leakage. But as barriers get thinner, the possibility for electron tunneling becomes more likely. When an electron encounters a very thin barrier -- something on the order of a single nanometer in width -- it can pass from one side of the barrier to the other even if the electron's energy levels seem too low for that to happen normally. Scientists call the phenomenon tunneling even though the electron doesn't make a physical hole in the barrier.

This is a big problem for microprocessors. Microprocessors work by channeling electrons through transistor switches. Microprocessors with transistors on the nanoscale already have to deal with some levels of electron leakage. Leakage makes microprocessors less efficient. Without a dramatic change to the way Intel designs transistors, there's a danger that Moore's Law will finally become moot.

Still, engineers tend to think of ways around problems that seem completely insurmountable. Even if transistors can't get any smaller after one or two more generations, it won't be the end of electronics. It just might mean we advance a little more slowly than we're accustomed to.

What causes the smell after rain?

2008-12-23T01:38:00.001-08:00

Most people notice a distinctive smell in the air after it rains. It's frequently linked with spring, as the smell of fresh cut grass is associated with summer. You'll find it in a lot of poetry and also on many inspirational lists of things to be happy about. But what causes it?

As it turns out, the smells people associate with rainstorms can be caused by a number of things. One of the more pleasant rain smells, the one we often notice in the woods, is actually caused by bacteria! Actinomycetes, a type of filamentous bacteria, grow in soil when conditions are damp and warm. When the soil dries out, the bacteria produces spores in the soil. The wetness and force of rainfall kick these tiny spores up into the air where the moisture after a rain acts as an aerosol (just like an aerosol air freshener). The moist air easily carries the spores to us so we breathe them in. These spores have a distinctive, earthy smell we often associate with rainfall. The bacteria is extremely common and can be found in areas all over the world, which accounts for the universality of this sweet "after-the-rain" smell. Since the bacteria thrives in moist soil but releases the spores once the soil dries out, the smell is most acute after a rain that follows a dry spell, although you'll notice it to some degree after most rainstorms.

Another sort of smell is caused by the acidity of rain. Because of chemicals in the atmosphere, rainwater tends to be somewhat acidic, especially in urban environments. When it comes in contact with organic debris or chemicals on the ground, it can cause some particularly aromatic reactions. It breaks apart soil and releases minerals trapped inside, and it reacts with chemicals, such as gasoline, giving them a stronger smell. These reactions generally produce more unpleasant smells than bacteria spores, which is why the after-the-rain smell isn't always a good one. Like the smell caused by the bacteria spores, the smell of chemical reactions is most noticeable when it rains following a dry spell. This is because once the chemicals on the ground have been diluted by one downpour, they don't have the same reaction with the rainwater.

Another after-the-rain smell comes from volatile oils that plants and trees release. The oil then collects on surfaces such as rocks. The rain reacts with the oil on the rocks and carries it as a gas through the air. This scent is like the bacteria spores in that most people consider it a pleasant, fresh smell. It has even been bottled and sold for its aromatic qualities!

These are a few common rain smells, but there are also all sorts of other scents after it rains. There is lots of aromatic material that the moisture and impact of rain can stir up, and the moist atmosphere following a downpour is particularly good at carrying these particles through the air. So, when you talk about the after-the-rain smell with a friend, you may mean one thing while your friend is thinking of something else. You'll both agree, however, that the air has a much stronger aroma to it after a good rain.

What is the UV index and how is it calculated?

2008-12-23T01:37:00.001-08:00

If you have read How Sunburns and Sun Tans Work, you know that your skin is sensitive to ultraviolet (UV) radiation. The UV index is a value calculated each day that helps you to know how much UV radiation will reach you if you go outside. By knowing the index value for the day, you can take appropriate precautions. These precautions help you avoid sunburn in the short term and skin cancer in the long term.

The UV index is calculated based on four factors:

The thickness of the ozone layer over your city (detected using satellites)
The cloud cover over your city (clouds block UV radiation to varying degrees)
The time of year (in winter, UV radiation is lower than in the summer because of the sun's angle)
The elevation of your city (higher elevations get more UV radiation)

The UV index value ranges between 0 and 10, with zero being minimal UV exposure risk and 10 being maximal UV exposure risk.

Why does the sky get dark at night?

2008-12-23T01:34:00.002-08:00

The answer to this seemingly simple question may boggle your brain. It's actually a famous cosmological problem, formally known as Olbers' Paradox. (Heinrich Olbers was a German astronomer who popularized discussion of this subject in 1826.) You might think that the question can be explained away by the effect of distance -- not so. To fully understand the perplexity, picture stars of equal brightness distributed evenly in concentric layers around Earth, like shells around a nut. The same amount of light should reach Earth from each layer, because although the amount of light to reach us from each star decreases with distance (by 1/d^2), the number of stars in each layer increases, effectively balancing out the distance effect.

If Star Layer A is twice as far from Earth as Star Layer B, then the amount of light that reaches us from each star in A is only one-fourth the amount of light that reaches us from each star in B; but there are four times as many stars in A as there are in B.

If the distance between A and B is 2 units, then each square in A is one-fourth as bright as each square in B; but there are four times as many squares in A as there are in B.

So light lost to distance does not account for the darkness of night. Obscuration by dust is not the answer, either, as any dust in the path of light would heat up and eventually reradiate. Most modern cosmologists have settled on two theories to account for the darkness. The first one states that red shift (see Echo and Doppler Shift), which indicates that space itself is expanding, decreases the amount of light reaching us. The other explanation -- generally considered the main one -- is that the universe is not infinitely old. If it were, the sky would in fact be infinitely bright, because light from every point in the universe would have had time (eternity) to travel to every other point. As far as we know, there is no edge of the universe, only an edge of time. The finite age of the universe limits how much light we see.

What is the heat index that the weatherperson talks about during the summer?

2008-12-23T01:34:00.001-08:00

During an average day, your body burns about 2,000 calories (when you are exercising heavily, it burns a lot more). That means that during waking hours, you are burning about 2 calories a minute. These 2 calories have the ability to raise the temperature of 1 kilogram of water 2 degrees C. If you weigh 50 kilograms (110 pounds), your body temperature rises one-twenty-fifth of a degree C (one-twelfth of a degree F) every minute. (For more information on calories and your body, see How Calories Work.)

Your body needs a way to dump that excess heat. If it doesn't, then body temperature rises into the danger zone in a matter of 30 minutes. Up to about 80 degrees F (24 degrees C), it's easy to dump excess heat simply through radiation (this is why air temperature "feels" comfortable at up to about 80 degrees F). Above 80 degrees F, your body does not have enough surface area to get rid of the heat fast enough, so your body turns on your sweat glands to make evaporative cooling possible.

Evaporative cooling works great if the air is dry. In high humidity, however, it doesn't work very well -- the sweat cannot evaporate because the air is already saturated with humidity. In high temperature/high humidity environments, your body can get into a dangerous situation where it cannot radiate or evaporate the heat away. The heat index that you see on the evening news is designed to make you aware of these dangerous situations.

The heat index takes the day's temperature and humidity into account and calculates what the temperature would be if the air were at 25-percent humidity or so (very dry). On this scale, high humidity can make you excruciatingly hot because your body has no way to eliminate excess heat. For example, 100 degrees F with 100-percent humidity is the equivalent of 195 degrees F at 25-percent humidity -- nearly the boiling point of water!

What if I were struck by lightning?

2008-12-23T01:28:00.000-08:00

Initially this seems like a fairly straightforward question. As it turns out, there are several ways a person can be struck by lightning, and the type of strike dictates the impact it can have on your body.

Direct strike - a cloud-to-ground lightning strike hits you or something you're holding, like a golf club, dead-on instead of reaching the ground.
Side flash - lightning strikes something close to where you are standing and then jumps from that to you.
Contact potential - while you're touching something, like a fence-post or a tree, lighting strikes that object and the current travels from the object through the point of contact into your body.
Step voltage - you're sitting with your feet together in front of you, knees up and rump settled on the ground near a spot where a cloud-to-ground lightning strike hits. As the lighting current disperses, it travels through your body by entering one point, say your joined feet, and exiting another, your rear end.
Surge voltage - while you're using some type of electrical appliance or a telephone, lighting strikes the source of power or network connected to the device and you receive a shock.

The worst kind of lightning experience is a direct strike - statistically, it's the most fatal. Being hit by a side flash or through contact potential are the next in the level of severity, with step voltage third and surge voltage last. Basically, the amount of current and voltage going through your body lessens with each of these types of strikes. If you're a victim of a direct strike, the full impact of the lightning courses through your body. In the other scenarios, the intensity is lessened because some of the energy is dispersed elsewhere.

The circulatory, respiratory, and nervous systems are most commonly affected when a person is struck by lightning:

Circulatory: Reportedly, the majority of fatalities resulting from direct strikes are due to cardiac arrest. Ironically, were someone nearby with an automatic external defibrillator, to administer another electric shock to the heart, the victim might survive.

Respiratory: The greatest threat to the respiratory system is paralysis. Artificial respiration is required so the victim won't die from lack of oxygen.

Nervous: When the central nervous system is affected, a number of side effects can occur such as dementia, amnesia, temporary paralysis, impaired reflexes, memory gaps and anxiety or depression.

Video Gallery: Why Lightning Strikes

Lightning will strike anything that stands high above the ground. Trees are a favorite target. No one knows how lightning determines its jagged path. Brought to you by the Discovery Channel.

Extreme weather has been causing death and destruction around the world. Near the Xinjiang province of China, high winds brought disaster, blowing 10 carriages off the tracks, leaving three passengers dead and 34 injured. In Sydney, fierce rain storms caused flash flooding where one man was struck by lightning and 11 school children barely escaped injury when their classroom was hit.

How do I avoid getting struck?

More than 1,000 people get struck by lightning every year in the U.S., and more than 100 of them die as a result of the strike. Lightning is not something to toy with. There are several precautions you can take to guarantee your safety in a storm.

If you're outside:

Always look for appropriate shelter in a building or a car. Most people think it is the rubber tires that keep you safe in a car because they do not conduct electricity. Actually, in strong electric fields, rubber tires become more conductive than insulating. The reason you are safe in a car is because the lightning will travel around the surface of the vehicle and then go to ground. This occurs because the vehicle acts like a Faraday Cage. Michael Faraday, a British physicist, discovered that a metal cage would shield objects within the cage when a high potential discharge hit the cage. The metal, being a good conductor, would direct the current around the objects and discharge it safely to the ground. This process of shielding is widely used today to protect the electrostatic sensitive integrated circuits in the electronics world.
Avoid taking shelter under trees. Trees attract lightning. Put your feet as close together as possible and crouch down with your head as low as possible without touching the ground - remember step voltage - you only want one contact point with the ground. Never lay down on the ground for the same reason; you never want the current to have the ability to pass through your body.

If you're inside:

Stay off the phone. If you must call someone, use a cordless phone or cell phone. If lightning strikes the phone line, the strike will travel to every phone on the line and potentially to you if you are holding the phone.
Stay away from plumbing pipes (bathtub, shower). Lightning has the ability to strike a house or near a house and impart an electrical charge to the metal pipes used for plumbing. This threat is not as great as it used to be, because PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is often used for indoor plumbing these days. If you are not sure what your pipes are made of, wait it out.

What is St. Elmo's Fire? What is called St. Elmo's Fire?

2008-12-23T01:23:00.000-08:00

If you were to look outside your home during a thunderstorm and see a tall streetlamp glowing with blue flames, you might be tempted to call the fire department. Then you might notice that the streetlamp is on fire but isn't actually burning -- and the water from the fire hose isn't putting out the flames. At this point, you might be about ready to call a priest, but that, like the call to the fire department, would be unnecessary. The phenomenon you're witnessing is actually St. Elmo's Fire. (Which has nothing to do with a 1980s coming-of-age film starring a young Emilio Estevez.)

St. Elmo's Fire is a weather phenomenon involving a gap in electrical charge. It's like lightning, but not quite. And while it has been mistaken for ball lightning, it's not that, either -- and it's definitely not fire. Early observers of the phenomenon, mostly sailors on high seas during thunderstorms, seem to have understood they weren't looking at actual fire, because instead of abandoning ship, they took comfort in the sudden glow atop the masts. Such famous figures as Magellan, Caesar and Columbus experienced St. Elmo's Fire on their journeys. And Pliny the Elder, who seems to have documented absolutely every natural phenomenon back in the 1st century A.D., beat everyone else to the punch when he described blue flames appearing out of nowhere during thunderstorms.

Sailors tended to attribute the glow to "St. Elmo," a mispronunciation of St. Ermo or St. Erasmus, the patron saint of Mediterranean sailors. They believed the fire was a sign of salvation from the saint, since the phenomenon occurs most often toward the end of a storm. Benjamin Franklin and Charles Darwin viewed the weather event through a decidedly more scientific perspective. But regardless of interpretation, it's clear they were all observing the same phenomenon. And contrary to popular belief, St. Elmo's Fire doesn't only occur at sea.

As with all electrical phenomena, St. Elmo's Fire is about electrons. So, what is St. Elmo's Fire if it's not a form of lightning? Find out in the next section.

Causes of St. Elmo's Fire: The Fire That's Not a Fire

Like lightning, St. Elmo's Fire is plasma, or ionized air that emits a glow. But while lightening is the movement of electricity from a charged cloud to the ground, St. Elmo's Fire is simply sparking, something like a shot of electrons into the air. It's a corona discharge, and it occurs when there is a significant imbalance in electrical charge, causing molecules to tear apart, sometimes resulting in a slight hissing sound.

Al Barry/Three Lions/Getty Images
Like St. Elmo's Fire, neon tubes glow with the light of a sustained spark.

The first step in generating St. Elmo's Fire is a thunderstorm. As you can learn in How Lightning Works, a thunderstorm creates an electrically charged atmosphere. There is a charge difference between the storm clouds and the ground, and this difference creates voltage, or electrical pressure. In between the clouds and the ground, the atoms in the air undergo changes; most important to our discussion, electrons move farther away from protons, creating an environment that allows electrons to move around freely. In other words, the air becomes a good conductor.

Once the air is conducive to the movement of electrons, those electrons continue to increase the distance between their positively charged counterpart, protons. This is ionization, and plasma is simply ionized air. The phenomenon that causes St. Elmo's Fire is a dramatic difference in charge between the air and a charged object, like the mast of a ship, the tip of an airplane wing or the 30-foot steeple of a church -- things we often think of as potential lightning rods.

When the voltage gets high enough, usually around 30,000 volts per centimeter of space, the charged object will discharge its electrical energy [source: Scientific American]. The reason why St. Elmo's Fire occurs most often on pointed objects is that a tapered surface will discharge at a lower voltage level. The tip of a steeple, mast or airplane wing presents something like a condensed surface charge.

When the air molecules tear apart, they emit light. In the case of St. Elmo's Fire, the discharge is continuous -- sometimes lasting several minutes -- and creates a constant glow. The glow is blue because different gasses glow different colors when they become plasmas. Earth's atmosphere has nitrogen and oxygen in it, and this particular combination happens to glow blue.

St. Elmo's Fire is exactly what's happening in neon tubes -- essentially a continuous spark. If Earth's atmosphere were made up of neon, St. Elmo's Fire would glow orange instead of blue. A neon tube is simply St. Elmo's Fire contained in glass. St. Elmo's Fire also behaves something like a plasma globe. One pilot described the phenomenon occurring on the windshield of her small plane while flying through a storm cloud; when she touched the inside of the windshield, blue streaks reached toward the tips of her fingers [source: USA Today].

Ball Lightning
St. Elmo's Fire and "ball lightning" are two different things. The scientific community can't agree on what ball lightning is, but it's definitely not St. Elmo's Fire. Ball lightning can float around the air, while St. Elmo's Fire stays put.

Why is the sky blue? Why sky is blue?

2008-12-23T01:20:00.000-08:00

Here is something interesting to think about: When you look at the nighttime sky, it's black, with the stars and the moon forming points of light on that black background. So why is it that, during the day, the sky doesn't remain black with the sun acting as another point of light? Why does the daytime sky turn a bright blue and the stars disappear?

The first thing to recognize is that the sun is an extremely bright source of light -- much brighter than the moon. The second thing to recognize is that the atoms of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere have an effect on the sunlight that passes through them.

There is a physical phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering that causes light to scatter when it passes through particles that have a diameter one-tenth that of the wavelength (color) of the light. Sunlight is made up of all different colors of light, but because of the elements in the atmosphere the color blue is scattered much more efficiently than the other colors.

When you look at the sky on a clear day, you can see the sun as a bright disk. The blueness you see everywhere else is all of the atoms in the atmosphere scattering blue light toward you. Because red light, yellow light, green light and the other colors aren't scattered nearly as well, you see the sky as blue.

Keep reading for more links to questions that have been puzzling you, such as whether smog makes for beautiful sunsets.

Why would someone fly an airplane into a hurricane?

2008-12-23T01:18:00.001-08:00

On Halloween Day 2007, a tropical storm named Noel by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) escalated. The storm was seated over Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Cuba, before picking up enough strength from the warm Caribbean air to develop into a Category 1 hurricane as it approached the northwestern Bahamas on Nov. 1, 2007. HurricaneUnited States and finally disintegrated in Nova Scotia. Noel's winds reached 80 mph in the Caribbean before it moved up the Atlantic coast of the

In its wake, Noel left at least 160 people dead in the Caribbean islands [source: NOAA]. It didn't turn out to be the strongest storm of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, but Noel was the deadliest. And the impression it left on meteorologists was enough for the World Meteorological Organization to retire Noel from the list of storm names [source: NOAA].

But in addition to leaving destruction and death in its wake, Hurricane Noel also left behind a breakthrough in scientific research. It was the first hurricane to host the remote controlled airplane called the Aerosonde. This unmanned aerial system (UAS) was developed by NASA and NOAA and launched from Wallops Flight Center in Delaware as the storm approached on Nov. 2. Aerosonde made history as the first unmanned vehicle to fly into the eye of a hurricane [source: WFC]. Eighty miles off the coast of the United States, Aerosonde explored the hurricane wall at altitudes as low as 300 feet (91 meters), sending real-time information about temperature, wind speed and atmospheric pressure back to hurricane researchers.

Like tornadoes, much of how hurricanes work remains a mystery to meteorologists. The information provided by Aerosonde will help researchers better predict what tropical depressions and storms will develop into full-blown hurricanes. Aerosonde represents a huge leap forward in hurricane research. It also signals the beginning of the end of another type of research: Aerosonde and other UASs will eventually replace the people who risk life and limb by flying airplanes into hurricanes.

Flying into the Storm

OK, so people today fly airplanes into hurricanes to gather data. That much is understandable. But why would anyone fly into a hurricane before the Weather Bureau or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) ever existed to accept weather data?

"Just for fun," was the answer given by Col. Joe Duckworth [source: Coleman and McCloud]. He and Lt. Ralph O'Hair, both flyboys for the Army Air Corps were among the first people to fly an airplane into a hurricane. In July 1943, Duckworth and O'Hair flew a small AT-6 prop plane into the eye of a hurricane with 132 mph winds off the coast of Galveston, Texas [source: Old Farmer's Almanac]. While the pilot and navigator won highballs at the officer's club after safely returning that day, the prize for science was much more pronounced: The thermometers aboard the plane recorded a 25-degree Fahrenheit (14 degrees Celsius) difference in temperature between the eye of the hurricane and the air circling it.

Flight Image Gallery

Hulton Archive/Getty Images
A 1945 photo of an AT-6 two-passenger fighter plane, the first to be flown into a hurricane. See more flight pictures.

Duckworth and O'Hair's flight into the Texas hurricane proved two things: It's possible to fly into hurricanes and survive, and such flights could provide valuable scientific information. Following that excursion, manned flights into some of nature's most severe storms became more frequent.

The next year, Navy and Army flights successfully tracked an Atlantic hurricane along the United States' Eastern seaboard. The coordinated flights reported on the hurricane's path and were credited with saving lives; a surprise storm had killed 600 people in New England six years before, while the 1944 storm (about which residents were forewarned) took only 50 lives [source: USA Today].

The advent of satellites in the 1960s made it virtually impossible for a hurricane to surprise anyone. Land-based researchers use satellite imaging to track the development and movement of every storm as it forms at sea. While these images provide information about the size and direction of a hurricane, there's still plenty of data associated with these meteorological phenomena that can't be culled from photos. Images provide overviews of a storm; to get the details, one must go inside.

Today, most manned flights into hurricanes are undertaken by the Air Force's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron (popularly called the Hurricane Hunters) and the NOAA. NOAA mans 8-hour flights into storms, going from one side into the eye, back into the storm and out the other side several times per flight [source: National Science Foundation]. NOAA drops a Dropwindsonde device into the storm to gather real-time data about the characteristics of a storm from top to bottom. The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron flies out of Keesler Air Force Base, Miss., and keeps track of Atlantic hurricanes with a flight crew operation of 20 people [source: 403rd].

Together, NOAA and the Air Force (and occasionally NASA) provide in situ (on location) data about hurricanes as they unfold. But the airplanes used by both groups have drawbacks. These are large, lumbering transport planes, like the C-130, and they don't fly quite as fast as necessary to provide the data needed to truly map the minute-to-minute changes in a hurricane [source: Henning]. The need for this kind of information still exists; until we fully understand all of the processes that create and direct a hurricane, we'll never be able to confidently model and predict future storms. With the advent of unmanned vehicles that can fly into hurricanes, it looks like this data will be provided without maverick humans flying into the storms.

Will the U.S. be a desert in 50 years?

2008-12-22T22:38:00.000-08:00

What happens when climate variations and human actions such as land clearing, urbanization and unsustainable agricultural habits mix? The combination results in an ecological crisis: land degradation. When land degrades, it can no longer properly absorb, store and recycle water, nutrients and energy. Land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry, subhumid areas (drylands) is called desertification.

Water Image Gallery

Joel Sartore/National Geographic/Getty Images
Poor agricultural habits can lead to dust and desertification. See more water pictures.

Seventy percent of drylands worldwide are degraded, and one-third of the world's land surfaces are threatened -- lands become more prone to flooding, wind damage and erosion, the quality of soil becomes poor, and productivity plummets [sources: UNCCD, UNESCO]. Areas affected by desertification are faced with not only environmental consequences but also economic effects. The World Bank estimates areas affected by desertification lose income greater than $40 billion annually [source: UNESCO].

In dryland areas, soil is fragile, vegetation is thin and the climate is merciless. Drylands cover more than 40 percent of our planet, and their susceptibility to desertification puts more than 1 billion people at risk for poverty and starvation [source: USDA].

Desertification Threat

While deserts expand and contract naturally, it's important to understand that desertification is different from this natural cycle. Desertification is also far from being a new global crisis: Ancient empires, including Sumeria, Babylon and Rome, were dealt its debilitating effects. Unfortunately, there is no one reason we can point to as the cause of desertification, but rather a combination of climate and our own mistakes, ignorance and actions.

Arthur Rothstein/Resettlement Administration/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images
While the dust bowl ravaged the Great Plains, many farmers stayed on to try to make a go of it.

Desertification is triggered mainly by the overuse of land and unsustainable agricultural practices (overcropping, overgrazing, poor irrigation and deforestation) which lead to a loss of natural vegetation and healthy soil. An expanding human population and urban living area as well as the low level of priority placed on environmental protection efforts also contributes.

Currently, the most endangered regions are near the world's five main deserts, including the Sonoran Desert which lies in Northwest Mexico and the Southwest United States; the Atacama Desert in South America; the Kalahari Desert in Southern Africa; most of Australia; and the large desert mass made up by the Sahara, Arabian, Great Indian, Taklimakan, Gobi and the deserts of Iran and the former Soviet Union.

But areas not on this list are still of concern. For example, desertification is a looming crisis in Africa where almost 70 percent of the continent is arid or semi-arid land. More than 30 percent of North America is comprised of arid or semi-arid lands, with about 40 percent of the continental United States at risk for desertification [source: U.N.].

Seventeen states in the Western U.S. can be categorized as arid, semi-arid or dry subhumid based on climate and soil type; this characterizes them as vulnerable to desertification. The most severely affected areas in the U.S. are in New Mexico, Texas and on the Navajo Indian reservation in New Mexico and Arizona. Overgrazing, which has led to wind and water erosion, and poor irrigation are the leading causes of desertification in the U.S., and scientists believe it's unlikely these areas will mend naturally from the damage in the next 100 years.

The 1930s Dust Bowl
As a result of poor farming practices and drought, the U.S. became intimately acquainted with desertification in the 1930s. Farmers set the stage for the dust bowl period as they plowed the natural prairie grasses in the Great Plains to make room to farm wheat. Unlike the natural grasses, wheat wasn't hearty enough to endure drought. Crops died and the bare land was left exposed to the elements. Catastrophic dust storms whipped across the plains, eroded soil, reduced visibility and caused lung illnesses. Three million people abandoned their farms on the great plains, most headed out West.

As a result of the dust bowl, the U.S. government created the Soil Conservation Service a group for researching and funding ways to fight the threat of desertification in America.

With the establishment of the Soil Conservation Service after the damaging 1930s dust bowl, the U.S. recognized desertification as a national problem and the government began providing financial support and resources to put appropriate agricultural practices into place. Together, state and federal agencies and nongovernment organizations work with private ranchers, farmers and developers on technologies that help reduce soil loss, improve irrigation and draw on renewable energy sources.

Land health in the U.S. is an ongoing and considerable ecological problem. In 2007, scientists noted the disappearance of green oases that used to dot the desert landscape as well as an increase in temperature and drought in the Southwest.

How far does ultraviolet light penetrate into the body? What depth ultraviolet light penetrate into the body?

2008-12-22T22:36:00.000-08:00

In human skin, UV penetration depth is actually very slight -- less than 1 millimeter. Ultraviolet radiation usually doesn't make it past the epidermis, the top layer of skin.

This is why UV-initiated skin cancers are generally in the epidermal layer.

If the temperature is 30 degrees F, why do we sometimes get snow and other times get freezing rain?

2008-12-22T22:34:00.000-08:00

When you watch the local weather report on the evening news, you always hear the "current temperature." It may be, for example, 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius) outside. That is useful information, but if it is precipitating, it is only one part of the puzzle.

It turns out that the atmosphere is layered, and these layers control the form that precipitation will take. The local weather report only gives us the ground-level temperature. In order to understand sleet, snow and freezing rain, what we would need is perhaps four to six different temperature readings at different altitudes.

Precipitation starts in the cloud as snow. As it falls, it may travel through a layer of air that has a temperature greater than 32 F (0 C). This layer melts the snow into rain. If the temperature at ground level is below freezing, then the water may refreeze in the air, and we get sleet. Or, if the layer of sub-freezing air at ground level is thin, the precipitation falls as rain but then freezes once it touches a freezing object on the ground.

For snow to fall, all of the layers of air that the snow falls through once it leaves the cloud must be sub-freezing.

The warm middle layers are normally caused by the movement of warm fronts or cold fronts through the area. In the Southeast, temperatures often hover around 32 F, so the form of precipitation can change all the time. In more northern areas, the temperature is well below freezing, so snow is a sure thing.

What is relative humidity and how does it affect how I feel outside? What is relative humidity?

2008-12-22T22:15:00.000-08:00

Humidity is something we hear about daily in weather reports. Humidity is to blame for that muggy, steam-room feeling you experience on certain summer days.

Karl Weatherly/Getty Images
If the air is at 100-percent relative humidity, sweat will not evaporate into the air. As a result, we feel much hotter than the actual temperature when the relative humidity is high.

Humidity can be measured in several ways, but relative humidity is the most common. In order to understand relative humidity, it is helpful to first understand absolute humidity.

Absolute humidity is the mass of water vapor divided by the mass of dry air in a volume of air at a given temperature. The hotter the air is, the more water it can contain.

Relative humidity is the ratio of the current absolute humidity to the highest possible absolute humidity (which depends on the current air temperature). A reading of 100 percent relative humidity means that the air is totally saturated with water vapor and cannot hold any more, creating the possibility of rain. This doesn't mean that the relative humidity must be 100 percent in order for it to rain -- it must be 100 percent where the clouds are forming, but the relative humidity near the ground could be much less.

Humans are very sensitive to humidity, as the skin relies on the air to get rid of moisture. The process of sweating is your body's attempt to keep cool and maintain its current temperature. If the air is at 100-percent relative humidity, sweat will not evaporate into the air. As a result, we feel much hotter than the actual temperature when the relative humidity is high. If the relative humidity is low, we can feel much cooler than the actual temperature because our sweat evaporates easily, cooling us off. For example, if the air temperature is 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius) and the relative humidity is zero percent, the air temperature feels like 69 degrees Fahrenheit (21 C) to our bodies. If the air temperature is 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 C) and the relative humidity is 100 percent, we feel like it's 80 degrees (27 C) out.

People tend to feel most comfortable at a relative humidity of about 45 percent. Humidifiers and dehumidifiers help to keep indoor humidity at a comfortable level.

Why are there more thunderstorms during the summer?

2008-12-22T22:14:00.000-08:00

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service, approximately 1,800 thunderstorms are occurring at any given time, resulting in about 16-million thunderstorms each year. Most thunderstorms last about 30 minutes and are typically about 15 miles (24 km) in diameter. The two biggest threats associated with most thunderstorms are lightning and flash floods. To understand why thunderstorms occur more often during the warm months requires some understanding of thunderstorm basics.

Stockbyte/Getty Images
High humidity and warm temperatures create prime conditions for a thunderstorm.

Thunderstorms thrive under certain conditions. The two most basic elements that cause a thunderstorm to develop are:

Moisture
Rapidly rising warm air

Because moisture and warmth are crucial to thunderstorms, it makes sense that they would occur more often in the spring and summer, particularly in humid areas such as the southeastern United States. The high humidity, in conjunction with warm temperatures, creates massive amounts of warm, moist air rising into the atmosphere, where it can easily form a thunderstorm.

Where does the thunder (and lightning) come from? The basic idea is that thunder clouds can become giant Van de Graaff generators and create huge charge separations within the cloud. Let's look at how it works.

Clouds contain millions and millions of water droplets and ice particles suspended in the air. As the process of evaporation and condensation occurs, these droplets collide with other moisture that is condensing as it rises. The importance of these collisions is that electrons are knocked off of the rising moisture, creating a charge separation. The newly knocked-off electrons gather at the lower portion of the cloud, giving it a negative charge. The rising moisture that has lost an electron carries a positive charge to the top of the cloud.

As the rising moisture encounters colder temperatures in the upper cloud regions and begins to freeze, the frozen portion becomes negatively charged and the unfrozen droplets become positively charged. At this point, rising air currents have the ability to remove the positively charged droplets from the ice and carry them to the top of the cloud. The remaining frozen portion either falls to the lower portion of the cloud or continues on to the ground.

The charge separation has an electric field associated with it. Like the cloud, this field is negative in the lower region and positive in the upper region. The strength or intensity of the electric field is directly related to the amount of charge build-up in the cloud. As the collisions and freezing continue to occur, and the charges at the top and bottom of the cloud increase, the electric field becomes more and more intense -- so intense, in fact, that the electrons at the Earth's surface are repelled deeper into the Earth by the negative charge at the lower portion of the cloud. This repulsion of electrons causes the Earth's surface to acquire a strong positive charge.

All that is needed now is a conductive path so the negative cloud bottom can conduct its electricity to the positive Earth surface. The strong electric field creates this path through the air, resulting in lightning. The lightning is a high-voltage, high-current surge of electrons, and the temperature at the core of a lightning bolt is incredibly hot. For example, when lightning strikes a sand dune, it can instantly melt the sand into glass. The combination of the rapid heating of the air by the lightning and the subsequent rapid cooling creates sound waves. These sound waves are what we call thunder. There can never be thunder without lightning.

Why do bridges ice before the rest of the highway?

2008-12-22T22:13:00.000-08:00

On a cold, rainy day, ice forms more quickly on bridges and overpasses for two reasons:

The freezing wind strikes the bridge above and below and on both sides, so it's losing heat from every side. The road is only losing heat from its surface. Even while the temperature on the road surface is dropping, the heat underneath the road keeps it warm enough to prevent icing as temperatures in the atmosphere drop below freezing. Bridges have no way to trap any heat, so they will continually lose heat and freeze shortly after temperatures in the atmosphere hit the freezing point.
Most bridges today are built with steel and concrete, both of which are good heat conductors. Because these materials conduct heat, any heat that the bridge has moves through the bridge to the surface where the heat is lost through the air flow around it. Roads are mostly made from asphalt, which is a poor conductor of heat, and that lessens the rate of heat loss from the road.

The bottom line is that a bridge will follow the air temperature very closely. If the air temperature falls below freezing, a bridge's surface will fall below freezing very quickly. Rain or snow, therefore, will freeze and stick to the bridge.

The Oregon State Department of Transportation advises motorists to slow down when approaching bridges and overpasses while traveling in cold weather. Often times you can't see the ice on the road, and it may be hidden beneath a thin blanket of snow. If, while traveling over a bridge, your car feels like it's floating, you should gradually slow down to maintain control of the vehicle. Never slam on your brakes.

Why do they use salt to melt ice on the road in the winter?

2008-12-22T22:12:00.000-08:00

If you live in a place that has lots of snow and ice in the winter, then you have probably seen the highway department spreading salt on the road to melt the ice. You may have also used salt on ice when making home-made ice cream. Salt lowers the freezing/melting point of water, so in both cases the idea is to take advantage of the lower melting point.

Ice forms when the temperature of water reaches 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). When you add salt, that temperature drops: A 10-percent salt solution freezes at 20 F (-6 C), and a 20-percent solution freezes at 2 F (-16 C). On a roadway, this means that if you sprinkle salt on the ice, you can melt it. The salt dissolves into the liquid water in the ice and lowers its freezing point.

If you ever watch salt melting ice, you can see the dissolving process happen -- the ice immediately around the grain of salt melts, and the melting spreads out from that point. If the temperature of the roadway is lower than 15 F or so, then the salt really won't have any effect -- the solid salt cannot get into the structure of the solid water to start the dissolving process. In that case, spreading sand over the top of the ice to provide traction is a better option.

When you are making ice cream, the temperature around the ice cream mixture needs to be lower than 32 F if you want the mixture to freeze. Salt mixed with ice creates a brine that has a temperature lower than 32 F. When you add salt to the ice water, you lower the melting temperature of the ice down to 0 F or so. The brine is so cold that it easily freezes the ice cream mixture.

Why is it colder at the top of a mountain than it is at sea level?

2008-12-22T22:10:00.000-08:00

You may already know about the relationship between temperature and pressure: When you pressurize air (or any gas), it gets hotter, and when you release the pressure on air it gets colder. So a bicycle pump gets hot when you pump up a tire, and a spray paint can or a C0₂refrigerator puts both of these processes together, pressurizing gas on the outside of the refrigerator to release heat and decompressing it inside the refrigerator to absorb heat (see How Refrigerators Work for details). cartridge gets cold as you release the pressurized gas. A

John Foxx/Getty Images
Lower pressure at higher altitudes causes the temperature to be colder on top of a mountain than at sea level.

You may also know that air pressure decreases as altitude increases. This table shows the pressure (in pounds per square inch) at different altitudes:

Altitude	Air Pressure
Sea level	14.7 PSI
10,000 feet	10.2 PSI
20,000 feet	6.4 PSI
30,000 feet	4.3 PSI
40,000 feet	2.7 PSI
50,000 feet	1.6 PSI

As air rises, the pressure decreases. It is this lower pressure at higher altitudes that causes the temperature to be colder on top of a mountain than at sea level.

Why is snow white? What is snow white?

2008-12-22T22:09:00.001-08:00

One of the reasons that so many people love snow is that it coats everything in a clean, "pure" white blanket. We even talk about snow in these terms -- weatherman say that we'll be getting "some of the white stuff" and every December you're likely to hear the song "White Christmas" over and over again. Snow wouldn't be snow if it wasn't white. But if you think about it, it seems weird that snow is white at all, since it's just a bunch of ice crystals stuck together. So where does it get its distinctive color?

Joseph Devenney/Photographer's Choice/Getty Images
Snow is a whole bunch of individual ice crystals
arranged together.

To understand where the whiteness comes from, we need to back up and look at why different things have different colors in the first place. Visible light is made up of many different frequencies of light. Our eyes detect different frequencies as different colors. Different objects have different colors because the particular particles (atoms and molecules) that make up the object have different vibration frequencies. Basically, the electrons of the particle will vibrate a certain amount in response to energy, depending on the frequency of the energy. In the case of light energy, the molecules and atoms absorb a certain amount of light energy depending on the frequency of the light, and then emit this absorbed energy as heat. This means that objects absorb certain frequencies of light more than others.

A couple of different things can happen to the light frequencies that are not absorbed. In some material, when a particle re-emits the photons, they continue to pass through to the next particle. In this case, light travels all the way through the material, so the material is clear. In most solid material, the particles re-emit most of the unabsorbed photons out of the material, so no light, or very little light, passes through and the object is opaque. The color of an opaque object is just the combination of the light energy that the object's particles did not absorb.

So, since snow is frozen water, and we all know that frozen water is clear, why does snow have a distinctive color? To understand this, we need to back up and look at an individual piece of ice. Ice is not transparent; it's actually translucent. This means that the light photons don't pass right through the material in a direct path -- the material's particles change the light's direction. This happens because the distances between some atoms in the ice's molecular structure are close to the height of light wavelengths, which means the light photons will interact with the structures. The result is that the light photon's path is altered and it exits the ice in a different direction than it entered the ice.

Snow is a whole bunch of individual ice crystals arranged together. When a light photon enters a layer of snow, it goes through an ice crystal on the top, which changes its direction slightly and sends it on to a new ice crystal, which does the same thing. Basically, all the crystals bounce the light all around so that it comes right back out of the snow pile. It does the same thing to all the different light frequencies, so all colors of light are bounced back out. The "color" of all the frequencies in the visible spectrum combined in equal measure is white, so this is the color we see in snow, while it's not the color we see in the individual ice crystals that form snow.

Can you calculate how far away lightning struck by how long it takes for the thunder to arrive?

2008-12-22T22:08:00.001-08:00

Sound travels through air at "the speed of sound." Officially, the speed of sound is 331.3 meters per second (1,087 feet per second) in dry air at 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit). At a temperature like 28 degrees C (82 degrees F), the speed is 346 meters per second.

As you can see, the speed of sound changes depending on the temperature and the humidity; but if you want a round number, then something like 350 meters per second and 1,200 feet per second are reasonable numbers to use. So sound travels 1 kilometer in roughly 3 seconds and 1 mile in roughly 5 seconds.

When you see the flash of a lightning bolt, you can start counting seconds and then divide to see how far away the lightning struck. If it takes 10 seconds for the thunder to roll in, the lightning struck about 2 miles or 3 kilometers away.

What causes the seasons? How seasons are caused? What is season?

2008-12-22T22:07:00.001-08:00

It turns out that the elliptical orbit of the Earth has little effect on the seasons. Instead, it is the 23.45-degree tilt of the planet's rotational axis that causes us to have winter and summer.

The diagram below demonstrates what happens.

In this diagram, you can see the axis of rotation and the equator. The Northern Hemisphere (at the top) is currently experiencing winter, and the Southern Hemisphere is experiencing summer. By looking at how sunlight is landing on the planet in the diagram, you can clearly see two things:

The Southern Hemisphere is getting about three times as much sunlight as the Northern Hemisphere.
The North Pole is getting zero sunlight, which is why it experiences 24 hours of darkness in January.

That huge difference in the amount of sunlight reaching the ground in the different hemispheres is what causes the seasons.

How could it rain for 45 straight days?

2008-12-22T21:39:00.000-08:00

For three years, ending in the spring of 2007, the state of Texas experienced a terrible drought, the effects of which were felt throughout the state. In 2006, two million acres burned in wildfires. That same year, the drought caused $4.1 billion losses in state agriculture [Source: Time]. When a large storm system settled over the state in late May of 2007 and began to unleash rain, many Texans rejoiced that the drought was over. But then the rain continued. And continued. For 45 days, it didn't stop.

Weather Image Gallery

Image courtesy of Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press
The torrential rainstorms in Texas made entire roads disappear under water.

The record rainfall created rampant flooding and devastation in many parts of the state. All of the state's water basins filled to capacity, and many rivers and reservoirs flooded. The governor declared disaster conditions in 37 counties and dispatched the Texas National Guard. President Bush declared 17 counties federal disaster areas and dispensed $3.8 million in federal aid to house, feed and clothe residents as they repaired their homes and recovered belongings. Texas launched the largest search-and-rescue operation in the state's history. Hundreds of vehicles, National Guard troops, helicopters, boats and professional search-and-rescue workers (some from other states) scoured for survivors. At least 13 people died -- most of them drowned.

Some people compared the damage to that from Hurricane Rita. Ninety mile-per-hour winds struck Seminole, Texas. In parts of the state, trucks and trains were turned over. Mobile homes, bridges, entire front yards and small shops washed away. Businesses lost their inventories, and city infrastructure suffered significant damage. Many communities were evacuated, while hundreds of homes were completely submerged in water. People took to the nearest high ground they could find, scrambling onto roofs, trees and the tops of cars or into boats.

For many parts of the state, it was the worst weather in half a century. In some areas, eight inches of rain fell in an hour [Source: NPR]. In Marble Falls, northwest of Austin, what's called a rain bomb fell, dropping an estimated 18 inches of rain in three hours. A creek that was normally a few feet across exploded into a 100-foot-wide raging river. Officials raised concerns about contaminated water as well as surly fire ants and snakes that were flushed out of their homes.

Despite the devastation, the drought problem was solved. Water rationing ended. Boats that had been moored on dry lake beds now floated on lakes filled to the brim. Nutrient-rich waters and blooming vegetation began to provide a hardy supply of plankton for recovering fish populations. Troublesome algae that thrived in low-water conditions started to decline. Finally, ranchers and farmers rejoiced as their pastures soaked in much-needed water.

Video Gallery: Extreme Weather

Watch this video to learn why New Orleans' levees failed during Hurricane Katrina and about some problems with the concept of levees.

Ever wondered how meteorologists predict hurricanes? Find out in this video about hurricane forecasts from NASA Connect.

Rescue teams often have to battle dangerous currents and rapidly changing conditions to save people from flood waters. Learn how rescue crews helped to save people from flooding in Texas.

After more than 40 days of rain, the scene seemed like something out of a disaster movie. What could cause such terrible storms to persist for more than a month and a half? Is this an isolated event or a sign of things to come? We'll consider these questions and look at other recent extreme weather events

45 Days of Rain and Other Severe Weather in 2007

Several weather patterns converged to create the devastating rainstorms in Texas. A low-pressure system came from the Caribbean and absorbed warm water from the Gulf of Mexico. That then combined with an "upper-level trough" and another weather front. This moisture-filled system stayed in place and refused to budge, especially over south and west Texas. Stuck in place, the weather system dropped its moisture on the state in a deluge of rain.

While the Texas situation was dramatic and parts of the state experienced record rainfall, the event was not unique. Tropical weather patterns often cause massive rain storms, especially in parts of the world that go through monsoon seasons. The rain bomb that dropped on Marble Falls produced an estimated 18 inches of rain, but even that amount is far from a record. Dr. Steve Lyons, a weather consultant at the Weather Channel, blogged about the theoretical maximum rainfall possible for an area, producing the following numbers [Source: Weather Channel]

2.4 inches in one minute
16.6 inches in one hour
28 inches in three hours
54 inches in 12 hours
75 inches in 24 hours

These are theoretical maximums, but Dr. Lyons' point is that the Texas rainstorms must be considered in perspective and that even the Marble Falls rain bomb is not a singular event.

Image courtesy Tony Gutierrez/Associated%20Press">Associated Press
Floodwaters caused significant devastation across Texas. Much of the town of Gainesville was under water.

Drought conditions have affected large parts of the United States in 2007, and average temperatures increased nearly everywhere in the U.S. from 1976 to 2005 [Source: Climate Prediction Center]. But it's interesting to note that average rainfall actually increased around much of the country during that same 30-year period -- by more than 1.5 inches in the areas experiencing the greatest increases.

Whether climate change is responsible for this event is hard to say, but global warming is believed to be linked to an increase in extreme weather events such as drought and massive storms. The warming of the waters of the Gulf of Mexico is likely a factor. A study published by Indian scientists in December 2006 offers a clue. In that study, researchers found an increase in so-called extreme rain events in India during monsoon season from 1952 to 2000. However, the number of "moderate" rain events decreased, meaning that, overall, the average rainfall did not change significantly. Their research linked the increase in extreme rain events to "rising global surface temperatures" [Source: Science magazine].

In case you were wondering, the wettest place on Earth is under dispute, but several areas, such as the Indian village of Cherapunjee, can receive two months or more of nonstop rain. Some of Hawaii's volcanoes rarely emerge from rain clouds. Lloro, Colombia, has the highest annual rainfall, averaging 523.6 inches a year. In comparison, the wettest area of Texas, the Upper Coast region, averages about 46 inches of rain a year.

Miguel Angelo Silva | Dreamstime
Climate change will likely cause lake beds to dry up one year and refill the next.

In addition to Texas, other areas of the U.S. and the world experienced severe weather in the first seven months of 2007. Floods coursed through OklahomaKansas. Drought conditions caused fires throughout the country, including in Alaska, which is warming more quickly than anywhere on Earth [Source: The Independent]. A massive heat wave in the western U.S. contributed to the driest year in Los Angeles' history and to a fire in Lake Tahoe that burned 250 homes. A cyclone in Pakistan killed hundreds and left hundreds of thousands homeless. and

The consequence of this severe weather may be that Americans are becoming more aware of the climate change problem. In late June 2007, the Pew Center in Washington, D.C., published a survey showing that the percentage of Americans who think that climate change represents a "major global threat" is 37 percent, up from 23 percent in an earlier poll [Source: The Independent].

How do trees affect the weather? Whether trees affect weather?

2008-12-22T21:36:00.000-08:00

Trees make our lives more pleasant. They're beautiful to look at, and they can provide shade or a good hideout. Forests cover 30 percent of our planet, concentrated mostly in 10 countries: the United States, Canada, the Russian Federation, Brazil, China, Australia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia, Peru and India [source: United Nations Environment Programme].

Marcel Mochet/AFP/Getty Images
Forests, like this one in France, cover 30 percent of the Earth.

That may sound like a lot of forest, but worldwide, our forests are disappearing. About 13 million hectares of forest -- an area roughly the size of Greece -- disappear every year. Deforestation happens because of population growth and increasing agricultural and industrial demands; trees are cut down to make room for new developments.

Why does it matter if trees are planted or cut down? Trees provide us with wood, fuel, food, medicine, latex and other products used in our daily lives. They also affect our climate. No, they can't make snow on a sunny summer day, but their very existence -- or removal -- makes a difference.

Climate isn't the same as weather. While weather is short-term, like the five-day forecast on the evening news, climate is the weather pattern over a long period of time, usually 30 years. And the climate of our planet is warming -- heating up by approximately 1 to 1 1/2 degrees in the past century [source: The Weather Channel].

In the next section, let's look at the ways trees positively and negatively affect our climate, and, in turn, our weather.

Trees and our Climate

Trees affect our climate, and therefore our weather, in three primary ways: they lower temperatures, reduce energy usage and reduce or remove air pollutants. Each part of the tree contributes to climate control, from leaves to roots.

Leaves help turn down the thermostat. They cool the air through a process called evapotranspiration. Evapotranspiration is the combination of two simultaneous processes: evaporation and transpiration, both of which release moisture into the air. During evaporation, water is converted from liquid to vapor and evaporates from soil, lakes, rivers and even pavement. During transpiration, water that was drawn up through the soil by the roots evaporates from the leaves. It may seem like an invisible process to our eyes, but a large oak tree is capable of transpiring 40,000 gallons of water into the atmosphere during one year [source: USGS].

Evapotranspiration.

The outdoor air conditioning provided by trees reduces the energy used inside your home or office. Shade provided by strategically planted deciduous trees cools buildings during the warm months, allows the sun's warming rays to shine through its branches in the winter and also protects buildings from cold winds. With some planning, urban trees can help minimize the heat island effect that saddles many cities.

Heat islands are cities that are often several degrees warmer than the suburbs because the urban areas generate and trap heat. Studies of Atlanta found that temperatures downtown were 5 to 8 degrees hotter than those in the suburbs. This, in turn, increased the number of local storms [source: NASA]. Phoenix is also warmer than its outlying areas. In 1950, Phoenix was 6 degrees warmer than the nearby Casa Grande Monument. By 2007, however, the temperature difference increased to 14 degrees [source: Christian Science Monitor].

When trees grow throughout urban areas, both surface and air temperatures are reduced. Researchers have found that planting one tree to the west and one to the south of a home can significantly reduce energy consumption. In the Environmental Protection Agency's study, annual cooling costs were reduced by 8 to 18 percent while annual heating costs were reduced 2 to 8 percent [source: EPA].

Leaves also filter particles from the air, including dust, ozone, carbon monoxide and other air pollutants. Through the process of photosynthesis, trees remove carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) and release oxygen into our air. Trees store the carbon dioxide, called carbon sequestration, and -- depending on the size of the tree -- can hold between 35 to 800 pounds of carbon dioxide each year [source: EPA].

Trees aren't our saviors from smog, though. Photochemical smog is smog caused when sunlight and chemical compounds such as car exhaust combine. Trees contribute to this when they release organic gases.

Additionally, planting trees as a solution to global warming -- a practice commonly linked to carbon offsets -- may have a positive impact on global temperature control only when planted in the tropics, a thin geographical belt around the equator. Normally, trees help cool the planet by absorbing carbon dioxide as part of the photosynthesis process and by evaporating water into the air. In the tropics, water evaporates naturally from trees, increasing cloud cover and keeping temperatures cooler. Outside of the tropics, however, researchers are finding that forests trap heat because their dense, dark canopies absorb sunlight.

How Meteorology Works? What is Meteorology? How Meteorology functions?

2008-12-22T20:30:00.000-08:00

Imagine for a second you weren't a human reading an Internet article and instead were a flea -- and not just any flea, but a flea living its entire life in the fur of a grizzly bear. Given such a hostile environment, you'd need to nail down a few facts to stay alive. Where does the bear scratch or bite most often? When does it sleep? Where's the best blood? How ferociously has it gone after its parasites in the past, and how might it behave in the future? If this sounds like a stressful existence, just consider the bear of an environment we live in every day.

Human beings make their home in the outermost region of Earth's crust, a 5.5-quadrillion-ton (4.99-quadrillion-metric-ton) layer of gases we call the atmosphere. As with our exemplary flea, our lives depend on exactly how the environment around us behaves. In its tamer moments, the weather nurtures our crops, gives us clean air to breathe and provides generally comfortable surroundings. But at its worst, the atmosphere, which is covered in depth in How Weather Works, delivers lethal frosts, searing heats, destructive floods and storms capable of laying whole cities to waste. Like any survival-savvy parasite, it pays to know what your host is liable to do next.

If you've ever rushed off to school or work in the morning without first checking the weather forecast, you probably didn't experience the equivalent of being raked with a bear claw. Maybe you slipped in the snow or the commute was a bit sluggish, but oh well, right? At the end of the day, you're probably still going to eat a hot dinner in a warm home.

Our lives haven't always been so weatherproof, though. In developing nations and harsher environments, daily survival still depends on Mother Nature. Despite modern safeguards against drought and flood, the weather can still hurt food and water supplies even in the most advanced nations. But in the ancient world, the ability to use past and present observations to predict weather patterns made you more than a weatherman -- it made you a shaman, a prophet and even a leader. Today, meteorologists augment observations with modern technology, physics and statistics to perform a no-less vital service, but we don't necessarily regard them as prophets.

In this article, we'll examine meteorology, the scientific study of the atmosphere and the myriad phenomena that keep it constantly swirling and raging all around us.

Weather of the Past: Relying on Animals, Plants and Local Lore

Pattern recognition is one of the key properties of intelligence. Your dog knows she'll get a treat if she does a trick because you always feed her after she rolls over. You know your aunt will probably give you pajamas for Christmas because your closet's stuffed with hideous, plaid pajamas. Our minds learn and act based on the patterns we perceive all around us. By knowing what came before, we know what the future will hold.

Burazin/Photographer's Choice/Getty Images
Early humans observed local animals and vegetation to help them determine the weather. Who needs Al Roker when you have migratory birds?

Early humans observed patterns in the weather and learned to anticipate changes that affected their food supply and well-being. They created names for the seasons and even forms of calendars to guide their wanderings and, later on, the growing cycles of their crops. People knew what the weather would be based on their own cumulative experiences, as well as those passed onto them by their ancestors. For instance, certain Australian Aboriginal tribes carry with them 18,000 generations worth of local weather observations [source: BBC]. Outside of their territory, their knowledge gradually fizzles out, but their understanding of weather incorporates a great deal of local detail. A tribe may recognize as few as two or as many as six seasons, depending on local precipitation and temperature factors.

Early humans knew that cooling temperatures meant the coming of winter. They knew the sights and smells that preceded a rainstorm. And where their own senses failed them, they turned to those in nature: the life cycles of various vegetation and the migration of other animals. Plus, many animal species are far more attuned to changes in air and water pressure that often signal storms and other atmospheric changes.

Long before humans invented devices to measure these conditions, they simply looked to the skies and fields. Animals recognized subtle patterns in the atmosphere, and we recognized patterns in their responsive behavior. These traditions continue to this day in the pages of The Old Farmer's Almanac and with practices such as Groundhog Day. To learn more about animals and weather, read Can animals predict the weather?

Following the weather in a region or tribal territory is one thing, but charting atmospheric patterns on a global scale is a different undertaking altogether. Over the last few centuries, synoptic meteorology, or the idea of comprehensively charting the weather over a large area, has emerged. By comparing simultaneous weather conditions in adjacent areas, scientists were able to better understand prevailing conditions over a larger area and to provide the kinds of weather maps we view on TV and the Internet every day.

How do meteorologists record current weather conditions?

Weather of the Present: Barometers, Thermometers and Hygrometers

You've probably heard the saying "too many cooks spoil the broth," most likely in reference to an album, business venture or even a sports team. It means that when too many people work on a project, the results are often confusing, lackluster or just plain awful. In a way, the atmosphere is a broth stirred by way too many cooks: gravity, sunlight, rotation, conflicting pressure zones, cool oceans, hot deserts, mountain ranges and colossal air currents, just to name a few. These forces constantly stir the atmosphere to movement, and just figuring out what it's doing at any given second requires a great deal of study and observation.

Bennett Barthelemy/Aurora/Getty Images
A scientist checks local conditions at a weather station in Arizona.

Three of the key atmospheric properties are air pressure, air temperature and humidity. To really understand what's going on, you have to be able to measure these conditions. For this reason, meteorology didn't really emerge as a science until the 17th-century inventions of the barometer, which measures air pressure, and a reliable thermometer, which gauges temperature. Before the 1600s ended, scientists also developed reliable hygrometers to measure humidity. These instruments, along with rain gauges, allowed for improved agricultural planning and sea travel.

But to gain a truly synoptic view of current weather conditions, you need a way to communicate with other observers in other regions. The 1837 invention of the telegraph made this possible. By the mid-19th century, meteorologists at various weather stations were able to communicate quickly with each other and assemble the big picture.

Toward the end of the 19th century, meteorologists used weather balloons to study the upper atmosphere. In doing so, they made crucial discoveries about upper-air pressure and wind patterns. Through this, meteorologists were able to discover the role low-pressure centers play in the weather. You've probably seen these centers pointed out on a map in weather forecasts. Cooler, denser air spirals into warmer, low-pressure areas from the surrounding regions. This, in turn, pushes the warm air up into the upper atmosphere, where the air spirals out in all directions. These formations are called cyclones (not to be confused with hurricanes and typhoons, which are called cyclones in some regions).

But this elevation of air doesn't just happen at low-pressure centers. It also happens when two air masses meet each other in a front. In either case, elevated air often forms clouds and storm systems. With these discoveries, meteorologists were better prepared to forecast weather. They weren't just making educated guesses based simply on pattern recognition; they were understanding how the atmosphere works.

In the 20th century, advancements in aviation made it possible for us to better study the upper atmosphere, and new radio technology allowed meteorologists to send sensitive equipment up with balloons to high altitudes -- a practice that continues today. Similarly, radio weather buoys communicated back conditions at sea, including water temperature, wind speed and wave height. Following World War II, scientists began using radar to study the weather since the technology made it possible to detect rainfall in addition to aircraft.

In 1960, another advancement added to our ability to observe and measure Earth's atmosphere: the weather satellite. By placing these automated observatories in north-to-south polar orbitsgeostationary orbits, humans were able to view their atmosphere from the outside and observe storm systems from a truly synoptic vantage point. Weather satellites provide more than just an extraterrestrial view of weather; they also carry sensors to measure temperature, moisture and solar radiation. and east-to-west

It's one thing to know what's happening now, but how do meteorologists transform all this data into an idea of what tomorrow's weather will bring?

Weather of the Future: Numerical Weather Prediction Models

Modern technology allows meteorologists an unprecedented understanding of Earth'sweather. But how do meteorologists translate this into a reasonable prediction of what the weather will continue to do? atmosphere and an excellent vantage point from which to observe its

Joe Raedle/Getty Images News/Getty Images
A meteorologist at the National Hurricane Tracking Center in Miami studies the movements of a powerful storm system in an effort to forecast its movements.

Instead of simply looking at current conditions and estimating based on past observances, meteorologists create numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. These models are objective, physics-based calculations which, when processed through a computer, predict what current weather will look like in the future. The equations involved in these models are complex and involve multiple atmospheric variables. These variables leave room for error, so the further out meteorologists attempt to forecast, the greater the potential for error becomes.

Look at any hour-by-hour weather forecast: Each hour's forecast is a step into the possible future. An initial forecast (such as what the weather will be an hour from now) is the result of running a computer model based on what the weather is doing now. Then, to run a model of what the weather will be doing in two hours, you apply the various equations to the model that came before it. So while the first forecast was based on actual conditions, the second was based on forecasted conditions that might have been less than accurate. Each subsequent forecast compounds the possibility for error. For this reason, NWP models become increasingly flawed the further ahead you try to look.

Meteorologists have steadily improved NWP models since the 1980s. By constantly tweaking them, they've created more accurate equations with fewer errors. Another technique, called Model Output Statistics, improves weather forecasts by taking the NWP model, which is based on current conditions, and extrapolating it by comparing it to past surface conditions for a particular region. This method essentially uses past weather readings to balance some of the errors inherent in an NWP model.

Weathermen vs. Meteorologists

What's the difference between a TV weather anchor and a meteorologist? While a meteorologist is a scientist who has earned a degree in meteorology or atmospheric sciences, the TV weather anchors you see daily aren't necessarily scientists. In fact, neither Willard Scott nor Al Roker is a meteorologist, despite making their names in front of a weather map.

Despite continued advancements in meteorology, don't expect a flawless weather forecast anytime soon. When considering the numerous variables in an NWP model, it's important to realize just how much difference even a small discrepancy can make. In 1961, meteorologist and chaos theory founder Edward N. Lorenz took a close look at the drastically different models a difference of a single decimal point could make. Based on these findings, Lorenz coined the term butterfly effect, in which the question is asked, "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?"

But while forecasting the weather is far from flawless, meteorology has saved countless lives by allowing scientists to predict where destructive weather will strike and warning people ahead of time. Your five-day forecast may not be perfect, but neither is our understanding of the complex array of movements that fill the atmosphere we live in.

What is Rainbow? How Rainbows Work? How Rainbows forms? How Rainbows Functions?

2008-12-22T20:28:00.000-08:00

Rainbows are one of the most beautiful spectacles nature has to offer -- so beautiful, in fact, that they've inspired countless fairy tales, songs and legends. It's a good bet that most of the artists behind these tales were totally mystified by the rainbow phenomenon -- just like most people are today.

But the science of rainbows is really very simple. It's just basic optics! In this article, we'll find out how rain and the sun align to put color in the sky.

Light Bends

The fundamental process at work in a rainbow is refraction -- the "bending" of light. Light bends -- or more accurately, changes directions -- when it travels from one medium to another. This happens because light travels at different speeds in different mediums.

Photo courtesy National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association

To understand why light bends, imagine you're pushing a shopping cart across a parking lot. The parking lot is one "medium" for the shopping cart. If you're exerting a constant force, the cart's speed depends on the medium it's traveling through -- in this case, the parking lot's paved surface. What happens when you push the shopping cart out of the parking lot, onto a grassy area? The grass is a different "medium" for the shopping cart. If you push the cart straight onto the grass, the cart will simply slow down. The grass medium offers more resistance, so it takes more energy to move the shopping cart.

But when you push the cart onto the grass at an angle, something else happens. If the right wheel hits the grass first, the right wheel will slow down while the left wheel is still on the pavement. Because the left wheel is briefly moving more quickly than the right wheel, the shopping cart will turn to the right as it moves onto the grass. If you move at an angle from a grassy area to a paved area, one wheel will speed up before the other and the cart will turn.

Similarly, a beam of light turns when it enters a glass prism. This is a simplification, but think about it this way: One side of the light wave slows down before the other, so the beam turns at the boundary between the air and the glass (some of the light actually reflects off the prism surface, but most passes through). The light turns again when it exits the prism, because one side of it speeds up before the other.

In addition to bending light as a whole, a prism separates white light into its component colors. Different colors of light have different frequencies, which causes them to travel at different speeds when they move through matter.

A color that travels more slowly in glass will bend more sharply when it passes from air to glass, because the speed difference is more severe. A color that moves more quickly in glass won't slow down as much, so it will bend less sharply. In this way, the colors that make up white light are separated according to frequency when they pass through glass. If the glass bends the light twice, as in a prism, you can see the separated colors more easily. This is called dispersion.

A prism separates white light into its component colors. For simplicity's sake, this diagram shows only red and violet, which are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Drops of rainwater can refract and disperse light in the same basic way as a prism. In the right conditions, this refraction forms rainbows. In the next section, we'll find out how this happens.

Making a Rainbow

An individual raindrop has a different shape and consistency than a glass prism, but it affects light in a similar way. When white sunlight hits a collection of raindrops at a fairly low angle, you can see the component colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet -- a rainbow. For simplicity's sake, we'll only look at red and violet, the colors of light on the ends of the visible light spectrum.

The diagram below shows what happens when the sunlight hits one individual raindrop.

When the white light passes from air into the drop of water, the component colors of light slow down to different speeds depending on their frequency. The violet light bends at a relatively sharp angle when it enters the raindrop. At the right-hand side of the drop, some of the light passes back out into the air, and the rest is reflected backward. Some of the reflected light passes out of the left side of the drop, bending as it moves into the air again.

In this way, each individual raindrop disperses white sunlight into its component colors. So why do we see wide bands of color, as if different rainy areas were dispersing a different single color? Because we only see one color from each raindrop. You can see how this works in the diagram below.

When raindrop A disperses light, only the red light exits at the correct angle to travel to the observer's eyes. The other colored beams exit at a lower angle, so the observer doesn't see them. The sunlight will hit all the surrounding raindrops in the same way, so they will all bounce red light onto the observer.

Raindrop B is much lower in the sky, so it doesn't bounce red light to the observer. At its height, the violet light exits at the correct angle to travel to the observer's eye. All the drops surrounding raindrop B bounce light in the same way. The raindrops in between A and B all bounce different colors of light to the observer, so the observer sees the full color spectrum. If you were up above the rain, you would see the rainbow as a full circle, because the light would bounce back from all around you. On the ground, we see the arc of the rainbow that is visible above the horizon.

Sometimes you see a double rainbow -- a sharp rainbow with a fainter rainbow on top of it. The fainter rainbow is produced in the same way as the sharper rainbow, but instead of the light reflecting once inside the raindrop, it's reflected twice. As a result of this double reflection, the light exits the raindrop at a different angle, so we see it higher up. If you look carefully, you'll see that the colors in the second rainbow are in the reverse order of the primary rainbow.

And that's really all there is to rainbows. Light and water happen to combine in just the right way to paint a beautiful natural picture.

How Storm Chasers Work? How Storm Chasers Functions? Who are Storm Chasers?

2008-12-22T20:25:00.000-08:00

Tornadoes and hurricanes are the most dangerous storms nature can throw at us. They can destroy entire buildings and cause thousands of injuries or deaths. Most people who live in areas susceptible to these storms keep a close eye on weather reports and take cover or evacuate when one is on the way. Storm chasers keep an even closer eye on weather data, but for a different reason. When a tornado or hurricane happens, they want to be there to observe and record it.

Storm Image Gallery

Jim Reed/Science Factions/Getty Images
Professional storm photographer Mike Theiss documents Hurricane Katrina's record-setting storm surge from the emergency door of a beachfront hotel stairwell in Gulfport, Miss., on Aug. 29, 2005. See more storm pictures.

There are some really good reasons for chasing storms -- mainly, scientific research, though a few people make a living selling photographs or footage of storms. There are also several reasons why amateurs shouldn't go storm chasing, no matter how fun it looks. For one thing, the eight to 12 hours spent driving around with no guarantee of actually seeing a tornado is anything but exciting. But also, storms are very dangerous. Professional storm chasers have meteorological training that allows them to understand the storms they're chasing. They know when conditions are safe and when it's time to back off. They also learn by chasing with other experienced storm chasers. Amateurs should never chase storms. Ever.

We're going to talk to some people who drive thousands of miles to place themselves near tornadoes, some of the deadliest storms in the world. We'll find out why they do it, how they do it and what we can learn from their experiences.

Hurricane HuntersMost of the time, when we talk about storm chasers, we're talking tornado chasers. There are people who track and even enter hurricanes, but no one really has to "chase" a hurricane. If there's a hurricane going on, you'll know where to find it.

People have been flying planes right into hurricanes since World War II. The key is high altitude. The severe winds throw planes around in seemingly random directions, sometimes thousands of feet at a time. If the plane was flying too low, it could easily be slammed down into the sea or land. By flying inside the hurricane, meteorologists can get extremely accurate measurements of the conditions there. They can also fly above the hurricane and drop weather instruments down into it.

The Nature of the Beast: Tornado Basics

To hunt tornadoes, you need to understand them. A tornado is a swirling mass of air that can reach wind speeds above 300 mph. It's spawned from severe thunderstorms with enough energy and the proper conditions to start a "cyclone" of spinning air. Tornadoes can happen anywhere and at any time, but they tend to happen most frequently in the late evening or during the night, when thunderstorms sweeping across the land have picked up energy from the heat of the day. Tornadoes are most commonly encountered in North America, in a huge area ranging from the Rocky Mountains east to the Atlantic Ocean, and from Mexico into Canada. Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas are known for tornadoes, but devastating tornadoes have hit Florida, Pennsylvania and other states.

Miami Herald/Getty Images
A tornado strikes down in Miami on May 12, 1997.

A tornado can be accompanied by frequent lightning, straight-line winds, heavy rain and hail. All these factors add to the danger of a tornado. The tornado itself causes injury and death in three ways:

Picking people up and hurling them through the air
Crushing people beneath debris
Impaling people with objects flung through the air with incredible force

Despite decades of research, we still don't fully understand tornadoes. No one is sure what causes some storms to produce them while other storms don't, or why a few storms produce massive outbreaks of dozens of tornadoes. We do know that they form inside supercells, huge storm clouds that reach up to the stratosphere (an altitude of six miles). Within a supercell, massive quantities of air flow in an updraft. If the horizontal air movement within the supercell is flowing in different directions (wind shear), this could create a spinning effect, known as a mesocyclone. The updraft tilts the mesocyclone so that it is upright, which then allows the updraft itself to start spinning. All the energy within the storm begins to fuel this cyclone. If it touches the ground, it can cause tremendous damage.

Next, we'll check out a day in the life of the people who drive around chasing these dangerous, unpredictable storms.

Measuring TornadoesTornado intensity is measured by the Fujita Scale. Because it's very difficult to measure the wind speed of a tornado as it's happening, and because it's very rare for anyone to be present with the necessary equipment and expertise necessary to even try, we measure them indirectly, based on the damage they do. Certain types of damage are good indicators of the wind speed within the tornado. For example, if a roof is torn off of a modern, well-built home, wind speed is estimated between 156 and 206 mph, a category F3. F0 tornadoes are the weakest, while an F5 tornado is a monster, with winds moving at least 261 mph. There is no such thing as F6 or beyond -- there is technically no upper limit to the F5 category, although scientists don't think it's possible for tornadoes to hit speeds much higher than 320 mph.

Today, meteorologists use an Enhanced Fujita Scale, sometimes referred to as the EF scale. It's basically the same scale, just refined and more detailed.

Storm Chaser on the Hunt

Storm chasing isn't nonstop action and danger. It's actually a very methodical practice that requires lots of time spent studying weather data, driving, waiting and more driving. Storm chasers can spend 12 hours or more driving around and still not see a tornado of any kind. Byron Turk, navigator for the Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers series, describes the process like this:

We find the storm hopefully before it gets dark, and hopefully it produces a tornado, and hopefully there are roads to it. Lots of decisions need to be made on how the supercell is doing, whether another one is more worthwhile, more data comes in and it's just a constant process of making the right decision over and over again. Hopefully.

In the southern states, storm chasing season runs from March through May. Further north, tornadoes are more common through the summer months [source: National Severe Storms Laboratory]. Storm chasers who don't live in the area will set up camp in a hotel room or other rented space.

Jim Reed/Science Faction/Getty Images
Meteorology students monitor an isolated supercell thunderstorm in Kansas on June 5, 2004.

Before bed and first thing in the morning, storm chasers check weather reports from the National Weather Service (NWS), looking for favorable tornado conditions. Cold air at high altitudes with warm air close to the ground is a promising sign, along with wind shear, or winds at different altitudes blowing in different directions [source: Trueit]. Areas where cool air masses collide with warm air masses are also tornado spawning grounds. After analyzing the weather data, the chasers select a likely location. Then they hop into their chase vehicle and start driving.

All storm chasers carry radios, phones and computers that allow them to receive a continuous flow of updated weather information. They can look at NWS data or talk to SkyWarn spotters, people scattered across the country who are trained to observe and report storms. At the very least, two people go on a mission -- one can drive while the other checks weather data and tracks the twister.

The chasers may have to drive for several hours just to get to their target location. On the way, weather updates might force them to revise their plan. If they've read the weather data correctly (and with a little luck), they'll find themselves within visual distance of a storm. Once they spot towering cumulonimbus clouds, they'll know they're on the right track. The storm chasers zero in on the storm while listening to SkyWarn reports. These reports can pinpoint a specific location where a tornado or conditions known to produce tornadoes have already been spotted. Another important clue: NWS issues a tornado watch or tornado warning for an area.

As they close in on the storm, the chasers will watch for several elements. One is the counterclockwise rotation of clouds typical of a supercell, evidence of strong air currents within the storm. Another is a wall cloud, a cloud that seems to descend from the bottom of the storm. Wall clouds don't always produce tornadoes, but they're a sign that one might be forming.

At this point, the chasers might have time to look for a good place to observe the tornado. Ideally, they would set up on a hill about three miles away to get the best view [source: Trueit]. Once a funnel cloud forms and a tornado touches ground, one of the chasers will track its movement by watching it against a stationary background object. A tornado can change directions suddenly, but in general the storm chasers will make sure they can move perpendicular to its path to get away if they need to.

In the next section, we'll look at the equipment storm chasers use.

Basic Storm Chaser Gear

Equipment used by storm chasers can range from basic (digital camera, cell phone) to amazing custom-built machines and research devices (TIV2, Doppler On Wheels). Let's strip it down to a storm chaser's bare essentials:

Video camera - Documentary crews are equipped with the latest HD cameras (or even IMAX), often with multiple camera operators to capture additional angles. But every storm chaser wants to record the storms he or she spots, so even the most budget-conscious chaser has a video camera along for the ride.
Digital camera - A still camera can capture details of a storm that videos often miss. Digital photos can also be uploaded quickly and easily to the Internet for other storm enthusiasts to see.
Laptop computer - With a cell phone, a laptop can maintain a continuous Internet connection, allowing for constantly updated weather data, including weather maps and other details that a weather radio can't provide.
Radios - If the storm chasers are riding in multiple vehicles, they can use walkie-talkies to stay in contact. SkyWarn members often use ham radios to communicate their observations, so chasers will need one to listen in. CB radios can bring in info from truckers who may have experienced nearby storms. A police scanner is useful for hearing the radio traffic of emergency crews who may be preparing for or heading to the aftermath of a tornado.
Food and drink - A day of storm chasing means lots of time in a car. A sandwich and some coffee are pretty crucial to any chaser team's success.

On the next page, let's dive into the high-tech, expensive stuff.

The First Storm Chaser
There were a few notable storm chasers in the 1950s and '60s, like Roger Jensen. The very first storm chaser, however, may have been the person who took a famous photograph of a tornado in South Dakota. The photo shows a massive storm cloud with a thick tornado descending to the ground, kicking up a huge debris cloud. Two smaller tornadoes extend out from the cloud to either side, like devil's horns. The date was Aug. 28, 1884, and the image is the first known photo of a tornado [source: Rosenfeld].

Advanced Storm Chaser Gear

Meteorologists have constructed special vehicles loaded with weather detection equipment and have even designed devices intended to be sucked into a tornado, where they could gather information.

Jeff Hutchens/Getty Images
Weather-monitoring computer equipment during a storm chasing tour in Nebraska

The Totable Tornado Observatory (TOTO) was one of the first tornado observation devices, built by the National Severe Storms Laboratory in 1981. It was basically an oil drum packed with scientific instruments. It could be left in the path of an oncoming tornado, where it would collect information about conditions as the tornado passed over, or even from within the tornado itself. TOTO never actually got into a tornado, unfortunately.

Other attempts to gather data from the inside of a tornado include smaller versions of TOTO, such as Dillo-cam. One experiment involved firing rockets into a tornado from an airplane!

Doppler On Wheels (DOW) is a vital component for advanced storm chasers. It's the same technology used to create the radar weather maps you see on your local news, but mounted to the back of a truck. This gives the chasers immediate, on-the-spot info about weather conditions. In 1999, a DOW truck recorded the world record tornado wind speed, 318 mph, in Oklahoma [source: World Book].

A few storm chaser crews deploy their own radiosondes. These are weather balloons. When released, they rise through the atmosphere, recording air pressure, wind speed and direction, and temperature data.

The most amazing storm chaser gear comes in the form of chaser vehicles. These range from simple modifications like additional batteries to power all the computers and radios, to the outlandish TIV2, which looks like something that drove straight out of "The Road Warrior."

TIV stands for Tornado Intercept Vehicle. The first TIV was a heavily modified pickup truck. You can learn all about it in How the Tornado Intercept Vehicle Works. TIV2 is an even more radical design. The truck is heavily reinforced and weighs roughly eight tons [source: Discovery Storm Chasers blog]. The weight makes it harder (but not impossible) for a tornado to lift. It has hydraulic jacks that extend body panels down to the ground, preventing tornadic winds from getting underneath the truck. The truck can also extend stabilizing jacks down to the ground. Lots of electronic gear, including weather and communications equipment, is wired directly into the dashboard. The windows are designed to give camera operators the best possible view of an incoming storm.

Up next, we'll try to figure out why people do this sort of thing.

Why Chase Storms?

What could possibly drive people to place themselves near these dangerous storms? There are a few reasons.

Fun and excitement - It's probably a bad idea to go out and chase storms just for kicks, but these are definitely driving factors for many chasers. In fact, some companies offer storm chasing tours. After paying a fee, the "storm tourists" get to go on a chase with experienced guides. That's definitely a better idea than chasing a storm on your own.

Carsten Peter/National Geographic/Getty Images
Near Woonsocket, S.D., a storm chaser plants a weather probe in the path of a tornado.

Profit - There are some people who make a living selling footage and images they capture of storms. There's no doubt about it, tornadoes are amazing and people love seeing them, as long as they aren't bearing down on their home. Warren Faidley is one of the more well-known storm chasers -- in fact, he bills himself as "the world's only professional storm chaser." His photos of storms can sell for five figures. Other chaser teams make a living filming documentaries about tornadoes, like the crew from the Discovery Channel's Storm Chasers TV series.

Research - Most storm chasers collect weather data when they get close to a tornado. They may have other motivations, but at the heart of every storm chaser in an insatiable curiosity about these awe-inspiring storms. Understanding tornadoes doesn't just satisfy our curiosity, it helps us react to storms with better, more accurate tornado warnings. The result: tornado deaths in the U.S. have declined since the 1960s, despite an overall increase in the number of tornadoes [source: NSSL].

Jim Reed/Science Faction/Getty Images
Members of S.T.E.P.S. (Severe Thunderstorm Electrification and Precipitation Study) launch a weather balloon into a tornadic supercell thunderstorm.

Community and friendship - Storm chasing is like any other hobby. Chasers become close friends. In fact, because they work together during some very intense experiences, they often develop a very close bond. "Chasing tornadoes is a gritty, down-and-dirty adventure with a solid group of people whom I feel a close bond with," said Byron Turk. "I've made some very good friends from the adventures. What success we achieve is all the more sweet after suffering through several days of 12-hour drives, nearly no sleep, wearing the same clothes that smell 2 weeks riper than they should. We have a goal and it is a very difficult one to achieve. There's a sense of pride in that."

So what have we learned about tornadoes in the last few years? Meteorologists have zeroed in on the conditions that cause them. We still don't know exactly when and where a tornado will form, but we're getting closer. Each time a storm chaser gets close to a tornado, another piece is added to the puzzle. A Discovery Channel crew captured footage of "minitornadoes" revolving within the main tornado in 2007. Later, computer modeling used this information to develop a more accurate picture of tornado formation and life cycle [source: Storm Chasers blog]. People once thought that tornadoes were simply smaller versions of hurricanes, an idea that seems laughable now. Yet modern examinations of supercell air currents reveal large-scale cyclonic action -- big thunderstorms swirl in a way not unlike that of a hurricane [source: Rosenfeld].

In addition to prediction, scientists are puzzled by several other aspects of tornadoes. One important mystery: Why do they develop such incredible wind speeds? Every thunderstorm contains enormous quantities of energy, energy on such a scale that they are compared to nuclear weapons. How that energy is sometimes converted to whirling wind speeds above 300 mph is still a mystery.