Author: Richard

Stratos 714 Launch

On the evening of Tuesday, the 11th July 2017 in their hangar at Redmond Airport, Stratos held the official public unveiling of the Stratos 714 Jet. The 714 Jet is the only VLJ single that can fly at 41000ft. It has the best performance of any VLJ Single. The 714 can carry 4 people 1500nm and 6 people for 1200nm at 400knots in cabin class comfort.

Stratos started nearly 10 years ago at the height of the VLJ boom and they have been quietly working away in their Redmond, Oregon facility. I have been involved advising the program since 2009 and I have been honored to serve as the structures manager for the last 5 years. I also worked as the senior structure engineer on the Diamond aircraft D-Jet Program and also worked on the Piper-Jet program. For me, after many years working on VLJ single projects, it is a great personal pleasure to finally see an aircraft that fulfills the promise of a true high-performance personal jet.

The aircraft is optimized for 3 roles – business travel, personal travel, and the air taxi market. The economics of the aircraft are excellent (both acquisition and operation) and the look of the aircraft put it in a class of its own.

The aircraft is remarkable, but that is only possible because of the team behind it. The small team that Carsten Sundin has put together has achieved great things, very quietly and efficiently. This year Stratos will be flying the aircraft into Oshkosh and I expect that it will steal the show.

Abbott Aerospace has done all of the structures analysis and helped govern the structures substantiation program since the start of the program. We have used FEMAP/NxNASTRAN for linear static and buckling solutions and achieved excellent correlation between analysis and test. Many thanks to our stress engineer Nirav Shukla who has done a large amount of the analysis work over the last 4 years. The landing gear analysis has been done by Endeavor Analysis and all of the structures testing has been done in house by the team at Stratos.

If you are at Oshkosh this year stop by their booth, enjoy the aircraft exterior and interior and say hello to Carsten and the team. They will be happy to see you.

Richard Abbott, July 2017.

 

How Risky is too Risky?

As some of you may know by now, one of my focus areas is program cost – especially on composite aircraft programs. We see many programs and while many aspects and details are project specific, there are some universal rules. This is one – this is my wording but I am sure that the sentiment has been expressed before, mainly because it is bloody obvious:

Effective cost control includes all aspects of development and manufacture and all systems employed within the organization.

These costs are incontrovertibly affected by choices made early in the program. If the wrong choices are made early in the program, control over the cost of the program is lost. This may not be realized for months or years later.

A common issue is the rush to develop hard tooling early in the development cycle. It is attractive to look at the amortization of high-quality hard tooling over a hundred or more airframes. That advantage, on paper, makes the use of soft tooling for the first few aircraft, look unattractive. Choosing ‘hard’ tooling when you are prototyping is a decision that is often regretted.

You lock in critical OML and configuration features early in the design cycle. Unless you are very lucky these will change. You are then faced with a choice – do we potentially scrap millions of dollars worth of tooling or live with the sub-optimal design that was locked in too early?

We have seen amazing results with soft tooling and MDF fixturing. If I could give names and details I would. We have seen very tight surface tolerances, sub-assy and aircraft tolerances held with seemingly low quality and very cost effective tooling. This tooling is not suitable for volume production, but for the first few aircraft, those tools give sterling service – and they grant you the flexibility to make changes and when prototyping changes are inevitable.

Material choice is another area where seemingly good decisions can be financially ruinous. The cost of the material ends up being the least important factor. The factors, (assuming that strength and durability requirements have been met) with the greatest effect on the overall development and manufacturing cost are:

Type of composite materials
As much as wet laminate and infusion offer flexibility and (on paper) cheaper materials, passing responsibility for resin quality and control over resin content to a reputable pre-preg supplier provides a relief to your in-house quality systems that is hard to quantify – but it is significant. Wet laminate can work for low-performance aircraft and infusion, when targeted at specific applications, does bring some benefits. Boring old pre-preg is still the best overall choice for almost any aircraft product.

Quality
The Quality of the material is paramount. Pick your suppliers based on recommendations from multiple sources. Make sure that they have a good reputation in rectifying quality problems. If the material fails your incoming inspection or testing, will they replace or refund? Check the data that the material supplier provides. We have found that some suppliers use inflated strength and stiffness marketing values to get you to make a commitment, only to find out later that the real data is significantly lower than you had planned. If the supplier provides official AGATE or NCAMP data then rejoice (but it has to be NIAR published). These are the gold standards for consistent comparative data that you can rely on.

Replaceability
Does the material you have chosen (whether pre-preg, dry cloth, resin or adhesive) have a similar alternative material that can be swapped with zero or minimal effect on your in-house processes, tooling, design, and certification? The ply thickness of a product (dry cloth or pre-preg) ends up being the single most important factor in sourcing an alternative or substitute material. A small difference in ply thickness can have a disproportionate effect on bending stiffness, buckling performance, bond gaps, and tooling.

Familiarity
Using a unique new material could be a great idea – but…….

  • You increase the risk of discovering a new negative strength, durability or processing aspect.
  • The existing skilled workforce will require some retraining and time to become familiar with the key working characteristics of the new material.
  • Finding manufacturing subcontractors to help you cope with manufacturing pinch points in your program is more difficult or impossible.
  • The certification authority will require an expansion of your compliance activities. Compliance cost is the single greatest schedule and financial burden a development program will face. Management of compliance risk is potentially the single most important component of an aircraft development program.

There are other factors that should be considered – shelf life, processability, toxicology, sensitivity to the environment and finally material cost.

The raw material cost of composites is such a small component that it is swamped by the other more critical risk factors.

The lower performance your aircraft is, the lower your selling price will be, the lower your overall materials cost will have to be.

Risk is cost. Least risk is least cost. Converting the previous statement:

Effective risk control includes all aspects of development and manufacture and all systems employed within the organization.

Every engineering decision you make should consider the headline cost figure, but every strategic decision that you have input into should give risk a much greater weighting than the headline cost. Failure to acknowledge this critical aspect of aircraft product development is all but guaranteed to be the cause of your eventual failure.

And on that happy note……

 

This article first appeared in the May 2017 edition of our free newsletter, to subscribe click here

 

 

Updated Torsion of Regular Sections Spreadsheets

As part of the inclusion of a Torsion chapter in the third edition of the textbook, we have revamped and broken out the torsion of regular section analyses into different spreadsheets. This also has given us the opportunity to check and make some minor corrections. Links to the spreadsheets are below.

 

AA-SM-002-011 Torsion – Regular Sections – Solid Round Rod

AA-SM-002-012 Torsion – Regular Sections – Thick Walled Round Tube

AA-SM-002-013 Torsion – Regular Sections – Thin Walled Round Tube

AA-SM-002-014 Torsion – Regular Sections – Solid Rectangular or Square Bar

AA-SM-002-015 Torsion – Regular Sections – Thin Walled Rectangular or Square Bar

AA-SM-002-016 Torsion – Regular Sections – Solid Elliptical Section

AA-SM-002-017 Torsion – Regular Sections – Thin-Walled Elliptical Section

AA-SM-002-018 Torsion – Regular Sections – Solid Hexagonal Rod

AA-SM-002-019 Torsion – Regular Sections – Solid Triangular Rod

AA-SM-002-020 Torsion – Regular Sections – Circular Section with One Side Flattened

AA-SM-002-021 Torsion – Regular Sections – Circular Section with Opposite Sides Flattened

Out of the mouths of gurus…..

This post originally appeared in the Abbott Aerospace March 2017 Newsletter. Click here to Subscribe

I rarely engage in public debate on social media platforms. There is usually little point as it is not a good forum to make people change their mind. It usually ends up as a name calling exercise and you end up either arguing with a fool, acting like a fool or both. I do engage in private correspondence with many people on many issues. This article comes out of a mostly private exchange with a management and efficiency guru. I will not reveal the name of the individual or quote any of his responses at any length, other than those he posted publicly.

One of the many reasons we left Canada and relocated to Grand Cayman was to reduce the regulatory burden of operating the company. Public liability, employment, taxation, professional status, environmental….you name it, in Canada if there is an activity there is a federal and provincial legal statute, regulation and policy to govern the execution of that activity – and, of course, costs for demonstration of compliance and penalties for non-compliance.

In Cayman, the expectation is that you behave. There is employment law but it is clear and short and an average person can read the statute and understand their statutory obligations as an employer.

For comparison purposes this is a link to the Canada Labor Code (http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/L-2/FullText.html) to save you the trouble, there is over 250 pages of over 86000 words.

To make things confusing – there is also the Canada Labor Standards Regulations (http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/C.R.C.,_c._986/FullText.html) this give you another 11900 words to review.

If you don’t have enough reading material, there is also the employment equity act (http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-5.401/index.html), another 8000 words

To avoid you running out of material to read here are the Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations (http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-86-304/FullText.html), over 55000 words.

There are also varying rights and obligations in different provinces across Canada (http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/work/labour-standards.asp?_ga=1.196689964.1203278258.1491091948)

We used to operate out of Ontario, so let’s go through all the laws in Ontario that apply to employment

The Ontario Employment Standards Act (https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/00e41/v42) – over 62000 words

The Employment for Foreign Nationals Act (https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/09e32?_ga=1.2431352.931789420.1491140384) over 8500 words

The Pay Equity Act (https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/90p07?_ga=1.262354244.931789420.1491140384) over 17500 words

To be honest, I am sure that I have missed several aspects of employment law in Canada. However, from what I am aware of there is at least 250,000 words of applicable regulations that, as an employer, you have to be aware of – just with regard to taking on an employee.

Don’t get me started on legislation related to taxation…..

The Cayman Islands Labor law is here (http://www.gov.ky/portal/page/portal/dlphome/publications/laws-and-regulations/labour-law-2011-revision) and has 16000 words

In Cayman, it is at least 15 times ‘easier’ (‘easier’ can mean cheaper, less risk, less stress) to be in compliance with the law.

We use a single page employment contract (less than 500 words) to describe our obligations to our employees and subcontractors and their obligations to us.

In contract law, if the contract is too complex to be understood by any of the parties signing the contract that is a valid defense if a breach of contract occurs. In the case of statutory law, ignorance of the law or inability to understand the law is not a defense.

I believe in the value of law – they are the rules that we all agree (under the ‘social compact’) to live by. The law is so expansive and complex in Canada that there is no practical way to be in compliance at municipal, county, regional, provincial and federal level. As a small business if you are in compliance it is only by chance, not by design and this is legally indefensible.

Having stated all that as a background – back to the point in hand. A management ‘guru’ posted the following on a political post about Trump

“..regarding Trump,  all are welcome to help distribute the following materials that clearly explain how/why reducing regulations increases business costs…..”

Yes, you read that correctly – reducing regulation increases business costs. Ironically the article was about Trump’s rescinding of the Obama executive order that created regulations in order to increase business costs and close down the coal industry in the US. Regardless of your political or environmental views, this is a case where regulations were introduced to specifically raise business costs with the stated intent to shut down an industry. A practical example that exactly contradicts this gurus view.

The guru asked me to connect, which I did. He then sends me a message to introduce me to all the free materials his institute provides. In return, I sent him a link to our free Ebook and reference library and requested that he clarify his statement as I was interested if he was really serious or he was just trolling.

We had a spirited back and forth. The guru’s messages got rather heated and oddly personal and it ended up that he would not answer my direct points but that I had to read his 250-page book to discover how wrong I was. His book is free, but if you can’t answer relatively simple points and have to refer to a 250-page monolog your argument is possibly unclear and certainly verbose.

This ‘guru’ makes a good living advocating for tighter and tighter regulations because he believes that it gives financial benefits to all companies. He places no limit on the benefit of regulations that force companies to do what is perceived in the common good according to the prevailing wisdom of the day.

Most of the western world has passed the net beneficial limit of legislation. The cost of compliance and the consequences of non-compliance are only able to be borne by large corporations. Small companies and individuals engaged in business in these jurisdictions risk financial ruin because of their inability to devote the resources necessary to remain in compliance with applicable laws, regulations and policies.

I don’t want to dismiss all of the points made by the guru – his crusade is to reduce waste, which is a good thing and is good practice for all businesses. An increase in regulation is, at best, another bump in the road, it can be a reason to relocate or at worst it can be a reason to close down for good.

So – it would be unfair not to put this in the context of the new part 23 airworthiness regulations. Do the new regulations constitute what I want to see – less regulations? More flexibility? Compliance cost reduction? Or are they more of the same – and possibly worse, dressed up as a business benefit?

The Part 23 Update and the Aircraft Developer – That Means You!

Last year I wrote a few posts on the part 23 update:

http://www.abbottaerospace.com/faa-part-23-revamp-good-or-bad

http://www.abbottaerospace.com/further-thoughts-on-the-astm-part-23-update

http://www.abbottaerospace.com/final-thoughts-on-the-astm-part-23-update

I submitted a letter to the FAA as part of the consultation process:

http://www.abbottaerospace.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/AA-FAA-2016-001.pdf

The new set of regulations was established as a ‘final rule’ at the end of 2016:

https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published/media/Part23_FinalRule_2120-AK65_WebCopy.pdf

I have not has time to read the entire document but from what I can tell the proposed update to the regulation has been adopted without any substantial change.

If you have read what I have published about this you will know my opinion on the change. We started our practical response to this last year.

Our opinion is based on our point of view as airframe and mechanical systems specialists. There are potential upsides with regard to composites material qualification, which is extremely conservative under the current regulations and advisory material. But most of us (the people that I work with and correspond with on a daily basis) have the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ approach. Tweaks and incremental change – good. Complete re-write – bad. The question is – how bad?

Preservation of Data and the Legacy Regulations

Because we do not know what the FAA will do with the current set of regulations and advisory materials we downloaded as much material as we could from the FAA website and have made it available through our online technical library (http://www.abbottaerospace.com/tag/faa-certification).

If you have not had chance it is interesting to read the comments submitted to the FAA during the rule making process

https://www.regulations.gov/docketBrowser?rpp=50&so=DESC&sb=postedDate&po=0&dct=PS&D=FAA-2015-1621

ASTM will not make much revenue on their investment in creating their standards until people pay for their product and people will not pay for the ASTM product while the familiar and free Amendment 62 regulations are allowed as an acceptable means of compliance by the FAA.

ASTM will be putting pressure on the FAA to start to remove or obsolete the existing amendment 62 documentation as an accepted means of compliance.

We have seen this happen a number of times where public domain US government references are developed into commercial product – Mil-Hndbk-5 into the MMPDS, Mil-Hndbk-17 into CMH-17.

Sometimes where old references have been made obsolete they are licensed out to commercial organizations and the freely available digital versions are removed – Mil-Hndnk-23 is a good example of this.

This gives commercial organizations exclusive commercial rights over formerly public domain information.

Application and Risk

This month we started an engagement on a project that will be one of the first to be done under the new regulation. This project has been allowed to use the existing amendment 62 regulations as an acceptable means of compliance under the new rules.

This is a practical work around but how many companies are going to switch over to the new ASTM standards while use of the old regulations are still permitted? You have to pay for the ASTM standards and the risks of using them have significant consequences. The risks include

  1. A lack of experience at the FAA in interpreting the new regulations leading to delays in the certification process
  2. With any new set of rules the policies will be in development and changing for some time. A change in policy during your certification program may cause changes and additional expense.
  3. Unfamiliarity in the OEM organisation with the new rules can cause problems in interpretation and cause expensive changes in the certification process part way through.
  4. If you want to certify under EASA, Transport Canada or another international body will those bodies require a separate compliance plan targeted at CS-23 or will the bilateral agreement still work in the same way?

It is a common experience that even a small differences in interpretation of the regulations and policies can cause disproportionate and sometimes fatal additional expense to a program.

It will be a very brave organization that departs from the amendment 62 regulations as long as they remain acceptable to follow.

Certification Risk Mitigation in Different Organizations

This begs the question:  What use is the new rule if almost all people are likely to continue to use the existing set of rules?

The purpose of these new rules is to reduce the cost of certification. As the new rules represent a high risk option and the consequence of risk is cost, the justification for the change makes little sense.

Larger OEMs may be able to invest in the certification management and liaison infrastructure to mitigate the risk of going off the reservation of the part 23 amendment 62 standards and gain some benefit from the flexibility the new regulations provide. They will also have the money to invest in the additional compliance work to gain EASA and other foreign certifications. Smaller aircraft companies and startups will not have the resources to mitigate this risk, and while permitted to do so will be left using the current regulations. It is hard to know which will be the better route

Any benefit will be conferred on the larger companies and smaller companies will be placed at a relative disadvantage.

There may be an eventual downstream benefit if the new regulations allow less expensive compliance programs for more innovative products but the risk of departing from the established compliance route for most organizations will make that option unattractive.

Public Spin

It is a little disquieting to read quotes from people who have been instrumental in pushing for this change:

Michael Huerta (FAA Administrator) : Asked how the new approach to small airplane certification was being received at the FAA, Huerta replied, “People are wildly enthusiastic about this across the agency.”

Piper Aircraft CEO and GAMA chairman Simon Caldecott: Predicted that the rule would serve as a model for future reform, noting that as a proposal it was widely regarded as a “poster child for good rulemaking.”

Jack Pelton, EAA CEO and chairman: “The changes in Part 23 will allow new technology and better efficiency in designing, producing, maintaining, and operating today’s airplanes and create future GA designs. It ensures a favorable regulatory environment for GA in the future.”

I read many of the letters submitted during the consultancy process and there is a split between the largely similar concerns regarding the negative effect of the rule change and the positive comments. I think the weight of opinion is on the negative side. I would not describe the response of FAA staff as “wildly enthusiastic” and as they ignored all of the concerns during the consultation process neither a “poster child for good rule making”

The public narrative is one of optimism and excitement. The private opinions of many that I have heard is one of concern and incredulity that the FAA would remove large parts of the regulations and expect this to help companies navigate the uncertainty of the high risk compliance landscape.

This change (if you give credence to the interviews given) was initiated because it was too difficult to integrate new electronic technology in aircraft development.

The FAA, rather than opting for gradual change or change targeted at the stated specific problem have allowed specific groups in the industry to push for a radical rewrite coupled with commercialization of the rules and acceptable means of compliance.

Follow the Money

If this change was just a rewrite without the commercialization there would be less or no reason to doubt the motivation for the change. In this particular case a company (ASTM) will be making money from the aircraft certification process where they were not before. I think this is great for ASTM and I admire their ability to capitalize on the change in the regulations. I cannot believe that ASTMs motives solely arise from the purity of their heart and their desire to see safer aircraft developed for less money.

ATSM has total net assets of $266M (https://www.astm.org/ABOUT/ASTM-AR.pdf). In 2015 according to their financial statement their assets increased by around $8.5M.

It is worth noting that their net assets are mostly held in investments: $241M of Mutual funds, Hedge Money Market funds etc.

ASTM are a 501(c)(3) organization and are tax exempt.

ATSM may not be accruing or declaring profit but they are accruing and declaring wealth. I am not sure there is more than a small technical difference between the two.

There is a guaranteed additional cost to you if you choose to, or are forced to use the ASTM standards. There is a guaranteed additional benefit to the ASTM from the same action.

The FAA, rather than opting for gradual change or change targeted at the stated specific problem have allowed specific groups in the industry to push for a radical rewrite coupled with the commercialization of the rules and acceptable means of compliance.

If this change was just a rewrite without the commercialization there would be less reason to doubt the motivation for the change. In this particular case a private entity (ASTM) will be making money from the aircraft certification process where they were not before. I think this is great for ASTM and I admire their ability to capitalize on the change in the regulations, but I cannot believe that ASTMs motives arise solely from the purity of the heart and their desire to see safer aircraft developed for less money. I am sure they would like to add another $10M to their net assets. This rule change will certainly help ASTM achieve that aim.

I cannot see how further enriching ASTM is intended to help part 23 aircraft developers. There is a guaranteed additional cost and a learning curve for the OEM that includes further cost and risk.

The sledgehammer of radical reshaping and commercialization of the regulatory and compliance process has been employed to crack a nut that was originally just the incorporation of new electrical technology in GA aircraft.

Our Advice (for what it is worth….)

Our advice to part 23 aircraft developers is as follows.

  • In order to give your product the best chance of international certification via the existing bilateral agreements we recommend sticking to the part 23 amendment 62 regulations as much as possible.
  • In order to stay within the comfort zone and knowledge and experience of DERs and existing FAA staff we recommend sticking to the part 23 amendment 62 regulations as much as possible.
  • In order to avoid financial cost and potential legal issues with ASTM (reproducing any part of the proprietary ‘advisory’ material – former regulations –  in your work may be actionable) we recommend sticking to the part 23 amendment 62 regulations as much as possible.

I do not know how long the FAA will allow reference to the old part 23 regulations – so get your compliance plans submitted and approved ASAP!

The Cost of Professional Software and What to Do About It

As the owner of a small engineering service company, one of our major costs is software. This represents an investment cost and of course the ongoing cost of that most honorable of all con games – software maintenance fees.

This was thrown into sharp relief in the last couple of years as we relocated to the Cayman Islands. When we were closing down the Canadian corporation we had to re-jig our software maintenance contracts and move them to a local service provider in the Caribbean region.

After a lot of general messing around we discovered that the policy for this particular software company was that you had to pay $200 per seat to transfer the maintenance contract and have the privilege of continuing to pay significant ongoing costs for bug fixes and updates that are given for free with non-‘professional’ software

As much as I enjoy gifting people money (?) we declined this exciting opportunity to further enrich our software supplier. The upshot of this was that we either had to pay the transfer fee or cancel the maintenance contracts. As I was not going to pay the fee we canceled our software maintenance contract for our design software.

The issue of lousy support for ‘professional’ very expensive software came to a head this week as my fabulous high-performance laptop had a video card driver update which my $5000 design software package did not like. So, now I get a frame rate, even for the simplest model, of about one frame every two seconds.

No other software I buy (office applications, video games, cheaper applications) offer the same exorbitant costs for customer support. They all offer updates and bug fixes pretty much for free – at least until there is a major software update.

We have our own little software company, XL-Viking, which is an add-in for Microsoft Excel. We dread the day when Microsoft releases a major update for Excel because we will have to come up with a version of our software that works with the new version of Excel – and supply it without charge to our customer base. But then we only charge $50 for the professional license. If only we charged $5000 per license we could charge people for the privilege of getting the upgrade and still have the software full of bugs.

This all looks to be ass-backwards, but…….

I know this is a function of economies of scale – more expensive software packages generally have a smaller user base so it is more difficult to offer free support and upgrades.  Or this is what I thought I knew was until I started to dig into the numbers.

For example, Dassault Systems software business only made a paltry €402,000,000 profit in 2015 (I’m not singling them out, just using them as an example). I can see why they need to charge for bug fixes for a $15,000 software package with that kind of profit. They are barely scraping by (sarc).

I used to work in the music industry many years ago in another life. Music used to be sold in a form that was incredibly profitable for the record companies. This ended with the dawn of digital music. Napster came along and showed everyone how to illegally share music for free. There was a responsive paradigm shift in the industry (that is still ongoing) and the cost of music has dropped to a fraction of the previous cost as the industry realized that they had to compete with free and now you have Spotify, Google Play, Itunes and a host of other services that offer music at a less exorbitant price.

Many artists choose to give their music away for free and live off donations, merchandising and live fees. This is the same approach we have taken with our technical library.

Cable TV is going through the same shift and streaming services at a fraction of the cost, making traditional cable TV packages look expensive and nonsensical.

I am not advocating that everyone should start using hacked copies of commercial software to force a Napster type revolution in the design software industry. A similar shift through natural evolution would be nice though. Admittedly it is happening with subscription-only software costs.

So this year we will make the change to a subscription only CAD software package. We will post details of the selection process and the final decision we make – and whether we think it is any better than the industry status quo.

Circular Properties – Segments and Sectors

Over the last couple of weeks I had to generate some circle segment and sector section properties – this spreadsheet calculates the area and the position of the centroid of circular segments and sectors. You can download it here

We have created some other useful geometric property calculators (other than the typical section properties in this spreadsheet)

AA-SM-210 Tools – Quadrilateral Analysis.xlsx

AA-SM-211-001 Tools – Angles between 2 points in 3D space and distance to a point.xlsx

Enjoy!

What to do about Microsoft – Revisited

You can read the original post here.

There is customer service and then there is Microsoft customer service.

Following on from the inability of Microsoft to transfer an Office 365 account between countries I received an email notice from Microsoft regarding the old and now delinquent account. This is the account that we had let slide into delinquency because Microsoft do not allow a transition between countries once an Office 365 account has been created:

 

Those of you with keen vision will notice that our subscription is noted to have expired on the 21 August 2017 (the date of writing is 10 March 2017) – more than 5 months in the future.

*Sigh*

I have to trust these people with not only my credit card details but also trust in the mathematical accuracy of their products. We use Microsoft Excel for a lot of analysis work. I know that the application coding is done by a completely different team than the subscriptions and billing. The same management team and executive select and govern both teams and these errors reduce confidence in the overall competency of the systems used and the people who administer them.

I know there is no point raising this issue with Microsoft (it would take several hours trekking through the customer service swamp to get to the right department). Maybe someone in the customer service department will view this post and start the decades-long process of proposing a program to address the forming of a committee to administer the process of creating a specification to outline the resources to identify the parameters required to formulate a proposal  to address the forming of a committee to administer the process of ……… you get the idea.

This post originally appeared in the Abbott Aerospace March 2017 Newsletter. Click here to Subscribe

What to do about Microsoft?

It seems that once a month I end up writing some rant about a piece of software. Believe me, this is not my intention but once a month something essentially stupid happens with a piece of technology.

This month it is microsoft’s turn. I joke about other companies turning into Microsoft as, in some aspects, they exemplify a company that releases products without due consideration and fail to support effectively.

Today as well as having to reinstall Windows on my trusty traveling laptop (Acer Predator – an outstanding conglomeration of hardware), which is just part of periodic maintenance for any Windows laptop, I finally grasped the nettle of converting my office 365 account over from Canada to Cayman. I have tried to do this before and there is seemingly no way to do it. The reason for this is simple: There is no way to do it.

I cannot continue with the Office 365 account as is because it will not accept my credit card for payment as it is from the wrong country – the country field in the address associated with the card defaults to Canada.

I called Microsoft and after being passed around between three departments and spending 2 hours (off and on) talking to a stream of unfailingly polite technical service agents (or whatever they call themselves nowadays) we together discovered that we would have to set up a new account with new ‘onmicrosoft’ email addresses. Once an account has been created the country for the account can not be changed.

This looks like a major failing of the account management system they have elected to use. It looks this way because that is exactly what it is. Luckily we do not use Microsoft’s cloud storage for our office files otherwise, we would have lost all of our data as the old account becomes delinquent because of non-payment.

We still use Microsoft products – we have a long running love affair with Excel although we are slowly incorporating Google docs more and more.

It is easy to criticize Microsoft – first of all, because they seem to do a lot of things wrong. Secondly, it is because they are dealing with a legacy software catalog and new cloud services that are used by over a billion or more people all over the world.

As our company stands now we are small enough that I can personally get involved with all customer service issues. Not that I have to – we have excellent people – but the client always likes it if the company owner/CEO steps in and personally resolves the issue. This is fine when you have less than 10 clients.

Is this type of problem inevitable as a company grows? How can these problems be minimized – what systems can you put in place to avoid these problems, and when they do occur how can you provide speedy pain-free resolution? How do you do this without impacting the bottom line? Would a greater investment in avoiding and resolving these problems improve profits even if you have an effective monopoly (e.g. Google, Microsoft, etc)?

As we grow over the coming years and I am less able to personally resolve client issues will our reputation be harmed? What can I put in place now to minimize these issues? Answers on a postcard please…..

This post originally appeared in the Abbott Aerospace January 2017 Newsletter. Click here to Subscribe.

 

Updated Part 23 Simplified Loads Sheets

While setting up a loads analysis for a part 23 aircraft we selected to use some parts of the simplified method from the part 23 appendix. In order to understand the context of the entire simplified loads-analysis we set up all of the methods for the aircraft loads, control surfaces, tab and flap loads in our standard spreadsheet form.

These methods generate the design speeds, the V-n diagrams. The spreadsheets also calculate the load per unit span and the moment per unit span around a reference axis for the aileron, elevator, rudder, tabs and flaps.

These methods are only applicable to simple, traditional aircraft configurations. Part 23 Appendix A should be read in its entirety to fully understand the context of these loads methods.

We have created a spreadsheet that contains the integrated method:

AA-SM-515-000 Loads – Simplified Part 23 Aircraft Loads – Complete.xlsx

and broken out the individual components into separate sheets:

AA-SM-515-001 Loads – Simplified Part 23 Aircraft Loads – Aircraft Loads.xlsx

AA-SM-515-002 Loads – Simplified Part 23 Aircraft Loads – Aileron Loads.xlsx

AA-SM-515-003 Loads – Simplified Part 23 Aircraft Loads – Elevator Loads.xlsx

AA-SM-515-004 Loads – Simplified Part 23 Aircraft Loads – Tab Loads.xlsx

AA-SM-515-005 Loads – Simplified Part 23 Aircraft Loads – Rudder Loads.xlsx

AA-SM-515-006 Loads – Simplified Part 23 Aircraft Loads – Flap Loads.xlsx

Hope you get some use out of the sheets – let us know what you think!