If you’ve ever been sitting in the window-seat of a plane preparing to take off, you’ve surely noticed the vehicles and machinery hard at work around you. Those vehicles and machinery are called Ground Support Equipment (GSE) and are used to service aircraft between flights. The roles this equipment fulfills include ground power operations, aircraft mobility, and cargo/passenger loading operations. There is both powered and non-powered ground support equipment. Non-powered equipment includes dollies, chocks, aircraft tripod jacks, and service stairs. Powered equipment consists of refuelers, tugs and tractors, ground power units, belt loaders, de-icing vehicles, and more.

Automatic protective devices, better known as circuit breakers, are a critical part of an aircraft’s electrical system. Circuit breakers are provided to minimize distress to the electrical system in case of wiring faults or serious malfunction of a system or connected equipment, and are paired with alerting devices that provide a visual or aural alarm to alert the pilot to the situation.

With the rapid modernization of aircraft, more electronic components such as navigation systems, intercoms, and even flight amenities such as entertainment systems all need power. With the increased demands of power from the beginning of each flight, many current aircraft have turned to alternators over generators as their source of power generation. In this blog, we will explore how alternators produce power, as well as how they can prove beneficial to some aircraft as compared to standard generators.

The aerospace and defense industry has an overwhelming amount of information including classification systems such as part numbers, NIINs, CAGE codes, USP numbers, and federal supply classifications. If you are doing business within the aerospace and defense industry it is important to familiarize yourself with all of the industry terminology as, without proper understanding, you may find yourself struggling to keep up with demand, or would be at a loss as to how to source a part.

Measuring fuel levels in an aircraft is an incredibly important task. Running out of fuel for an automobile typically means a ruined afternoon; an aircraft running out of fuel while operating, meanwhile, is potentially disastrous. Therefore, accurate and reliable fuel gauges are essential, with the most commonly chosen type in small aircraft being resistive-type fuel systems. In a resistive-type fuel system, a float level gauge feeds information on the fuel level to magnetic couplings and potentiometers that then relay information to the pilot. As fuel is expended in flight and the levels in the tank drop, the float inside the tank drops as well and slides a moving contact a long a resistor, increasing its resistance. The amount of resistance translates to how much fuel is left in the tank.

Aircraft rely on fuel for propulsion, but electricity is just as vital for flight as well. Everything from instruments to lights to setback TVs in commercial passenger jets rely on electricity, which is generated as some of the energy produced by fuel being burned goes into a generator or alternator that produces electricity.

One of the greatest challenges Americans traveling through Europe face is the fact that many of the plugs for their electrical devices cannot be inserted into the various socket types found throughout Europe. In this blogpost, we’ll break down eight different power adapters that will allow you to recharge and use your electronic devices while traveling overseas.

We are all quite used to the standard curved shape of a commercial aircraft window, but believe it or not, they were once square. In 1952, three tragic commercial airplane crashes left engineers puzzled. The ill-fated airframes had two things in common—a fuselage that tore apart at cruising altitude, and square windows. 

A portmanteau of “aviation” and “electronics”, “avionics” is a word used to describe aviation electronics for aircraft, artificial satellites, and spacecraft. Avionics are incorporated on an aircraft for a multitude of purposes: communication, navigation, monitoring, flight control systems, fuel systems, collision-avoidance systems, flight recorders, weather systems, aircraft management systems, and in-flight entertainment.

An airplane is an intricately designed machine. Not one component is solely responsible for getting it up in the air. All of its parts work together to balance aerodynamic factors and operating requirements. The main parts of the body of an aircraft are the fuselage, the wings, the empennage, the landing gear, and the engines. A simple way to understand the body of an aircraft is to compare it to the human body. 

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are units of measurement that allow businesses to track their success and evaluate how effectively they are achieving their objectives.  When choosing which KPIs to use, utilize the SMART acronym.

First appearing in the 1930s, reed relays were once a critical component of telecommunications systems. Despite phasing out of telecommunications, they are now more prolific than ever as they find use other applications such as automatic test equipment, electronics, etc

Aircraft engines and car engines seem like they would be rather similar. After all, they are both machinery that power massive vehicles used to transport people and goods. But, the truth is, aircraft engines are rather different. Aircraft utilize RPMs, not multi-gear transmissions.

Autonomous cars are self-driving vehicles. It is very interesting to see how long we have come from having a basic mode of transportation which has slowly but surely evolved into much more than that. A handful of the automobile industry has slowly transitioned into building their first autonomous cars. Companies such as Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, Audi, and of course Tesla electric have many of them on the road today.

In Danbury, the company Amphenol RF is expanding to its new PSMP interface. Due to the flexibility there will be four new cable connectors that will be available. These specific cables are designed for 0.141- and 0.86-inch diameter semi-rigid and conformable cables which allow engineers to have way more choices than they currently have.

Outside the United States lurks one of the USA’s largest Airforce base; located in southwest Germany is Ramstein Air Base. Ramstein serves as the headquarters for the US Air Force in Europe and is a crucial Air base for drone warfare, airlifting special-ops units and transporting munitions for airstrikes. The Air Base is the home to 57,000 US citizens and the Defense Department calls it,

On Monday July 11 2016, Keith Stuart wrote an article for The Guardian that talks about Microsoft’s Xbox One and the games that come along with it. After this year’s E3 conference in Los Angeles, there was much talk about the Xbox One S that Microsoft had on display during this conference.

With the mechatronics technology on the rise, a pronounced challenge by Ford was tested on their proving ground located in Arizona, USA. This thrilling experiment was carried out as part of their Smart Mobility program. Ford’s research and development team has certainly penetrated a new bench mark in the automotive industry by proving that their vehicles can now start cruising in the streets with no headlights or cameras, and using only LIDAR sensors. This enriched technology operates by measuring the distance around the vehicle’s perimeter and illuminating a target by means of a laser light.

By getting prepared for the Middle East’s major upcoming hardware, tools and machinery’s exhibition, a market analysis has shown that the fastest growing city in the world; Dubai, has an estimated line of work valued at 5.74 billion AED which includes imports, exports and also re-exports to other countries in the MENA region.

Programming at its finest brought by MODIVOUS latest innovation: Fathom Neural Compute Stick. The reading and the way a machine perceives files to a whole new level. The Fathom easily confused to just a plain USB drive stick comes with a lot more to offer than just reading and saving normal files. Designed to further learning and to show how to learn with in Dept files other than just any ordinary USB stick will allow. The Fathom Neural Compute Stick a whole entire internal network known as a neural network to be takin down from a cloud and displayed on the device that is the ultimate end user.