Military Readiness and Fighter Fleets

This is the Airplane Geeks podcast. We aim to educate and inform you, explore and expand your passion for aviation, and entertain you a little along the way. This episode we speak with the CEO of Heart Aerospace , that company is developing a hybrid electric thirty seat regional commercial aircraft. They are currently testing a full scale demonstrator. In the news, a near miss at Boston Logan between a landing Delta Airlines flight and a departing American Airlines flight NASA's Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability twenty fifty Program Canada may scale back its purchase of F thirty five A fighters and add sob Grippins , and that country may also look to Sweden for early warning radar planes . All that and more coming up right now . Welcome to the Airplane Geeks podcast. This is episode eight hundred and ninety eight of the show where we talk aviation . I'm Max Flight , and with me is first Rob Mark. He's a business yet pilot, the journalist, CFI, publishes jetwine dot com and he also produces the stories about flying podcast. Hey, good evening to everybody from beautiful downtown Chicago . All right, well you're not actually in downtown Chicago. Okay , close enough. Great. Okay . Good evening and welcome to everybody from close to beautiful downtown Chicag o. Okay . What's you going to say? Beautiful downtown Burbank. Remember from Laughin? Oh, that's right. I remember that. That was a long time ago. Also with us is David Vanderhoef's he our aviation historian, military aviation guy. He's from the American Helicopter Museum . Hello everybody. And I don't know where I'm from, so there you go . Also joining us is our main man Micah, he's co host of the Journey is the reward podcast. Good evening, good afternoon, good morning. Whatever it happens to be, wherever you are, and whatever time you're listening, and looking forward to a fun show . Yes, and we have a guest this episode who's going to help us with that. That's Anders Forceland. He's co founder and chief executive officer of Heart Aerospace , which he founded to electrify short haul regional aviation . Now, Hart Aerospace is developing the ES thirty. It's a hybrid electric thirty seat regional commercial aircraft. Hart's currently in upstate New York, they're testing the X one demonstrator aircraft , which the company says will be the largest electric aircraft ever to fly . There's backing for the company , Bill Gates Breakthrough Ventures and Y combinator , as well as some operator investors, including United Airlines and Air Canada. So Anders, welcome to the Airplane Geeks podcast. Thank you, Max. Excited to be here. Now, we're going to start this episode with Anders and we'll come to the news in a bit. But first, Anderson, let's look at the aircraft. Now , tell me if I've got this right. We have the X one demonstrator that's full scale all electric. That's what it's testing now. And then the end objective is the ES thirty electric hybrid . What are the objectiv es of the demonstrator? First of all, this flight is going to be the largest electric airplane ever to fly. I think it's the first time we see a clean sheet airliner, a Part twenty five Airliner go into flight tests , even in this extra mental phase. I think it's eighteen years since we last saw the Dreamliner in this category . And for us, it's just to show that we can, that a small startup can go through all of those steps that it takes of not just designing, analyzing, building an aircraft all the way through testing and then ground testing and flight and show that we can do something. We've seen a lot of startups do it with small, smaller planes, but this is again, it's a hundred foot wingspan aircraft weighs ten tons and it's a full scale demonstrator of what's going to be a thirty seater aircraft. So that's part of what we're trying to show . But what we're also trying to show is the big selling point of why go hybrid electric, and that is this first flight will cost about forty dollars worth of electricity. So for an aircraft that will carry thirty passengers . So what that translates to for the short flights, the short hops that we're looking to replace, where we're looking to replace regional jets, for instance, it translates to about forty percent reduction in operating cost overall . So we think that it's a pretty exciting future and we think that it's a future that's going to scale into , you know, having a remarkable impact of aviation in twenty first century. And as you said, hybrid electric, and that's where I start to get curious because I've always wondered why everybody has been working so hard on simply battery powered electric where hybrid I mean U. S. submarines the Columbia class is going to be turbo electric. The Zomolt destroyer is turbo electric. Everything is turboelectric and hybrid sort of builds into both. So can you tell us a little bit about the hybrid power ? Yes. So our aircraft uses combination of electric motor and standard issue turbo props. And the first aircraft that we fly is only flying with the electric motors. And that is really to prove the unit economics . But the real reason why we need hybrid is obviously that batteries are extremely heavy for the amount of energy they carry . And one in every thousand flights in the US gets diverted. So that's why we have something called IFRRSA rules, right ? So if you don't have a hybrid system and you want to fly in sort of regular commercial airline traffic, you're going to struggle because you need the forty five minutes of reserves. You know, you need the loiter time, you need the alternate. So you end up carrying two thirds of your battery for just for that mission that you're not going to fly only about one in a thousand flights. So actually the best way of getting the upside of electric, the best way of getting the financial upside of electric, the way of getting the climate upside electric is to use a hybrid range extension . And so that's, I think, where we're going. And I think that's not controversial when you're looking at what the big engine OEMs are doing, what you're looking at , you know, how the studies that are being done by the by , you know, the large OEMs on the airframe side as well. Everybody's pointing that hybrid is this next avenue , right? This is where we can , you know, we're always driven by cost. We're always driven by fuel efficiencies. It's been there for the last decade. And that's we're kind of hitting a wall with what we can do with jet engines. So this is the next frontier . So you're using a turboshaft to power a generator to send power to the electric motor to power the prop. Is that what's going on? Yes. I mean there's certainly different ways of doing it . If you if you look at our concept, it's actually a turboprop running a propeller parallel to an electric motor. But what you're suggesting , there's actually been a lot of we've done a lot of development. We're actually testing the system on the ground right now. It's not on the plane . And you're right that that is one of the ways that it's a very efficient way of doing it. So does the X one carry a battery system to support the electric? Yes. Yes, yes, it carries a large battery system to support this . It's about two tons worth of batteries in the aircraft. I'm curious is does the reality that drives you towards a hybrid approach , can that be viewed as sort of an intermediate step maybe if long term energy density goes up in batteries and the weight comes down for the given amount of power storage. Or do you think it's sort of a long term approach? I think I see there's this kind of being a fork in the road like when we see batteries getting better and right now after having plateaued for a while, we're actually seeing a new generation of batteries coming out that are very good. But I mean it's a long time before we get to the place where we could do narrow bodies all electric and fly all electric miss ions. So I see potential for full electric on smaller aircraft that have kind of shuttle routes that are very the small end , but they can do that very good unit economics . But I also see this techn ology of hybridization of using batteries to reduce the overall fuel consumption with even without not flying all electric flights. So maybe I forgot to say this, but the ES thirty aircraft are the product ion version of our aircraft will be able to fly about one hundred and twenty five miles all electrically. So this is feeding major hubs. It's going routes like Denver to Aspen and many different routes across the world . But it also when you turn on the hybrid system, you can actually fly extended and you can fly five hundred miles plus IFR reserves . So it becomes very useful and this is great. It's not the typical route to fly five hundred miles with a turboprop, but it's certainly something that is good for fleet commonality, logistics, et cetera. And why did Heart proceed down a path with this size of an aircraft , a thirty passenger aircraft when so many others are looking at smaller electric aircraft and this is a little on the larger side . Yeah, I mean, I think it's so from a technical side, well, first of all, start from the commercial side . And I think if you speak China airlines, they want larger aircraft because basically they want to put as many passengers as they can to amortize the pilots, the cost of the plane, the landing fees, et cetera. But then you have on the other side, you have the technical side, what is possible ? People sometimes get confused and think that there's limitations of physics that determine how far you can go with an electric aircraft. I think it's more the realization that where the brunt of development has been, for instance, in high voltage electronics and charging, all of these things is kind of at the size of the large Tesla semi or the electric trucks. And they're roughly the same weight, they're roughly the same battery size, they're roughly the same power levels, voltage levels as REST thirty aircraft. So we get a lot of things for free. We don't have to develop like our own high power systems and high power charging, et cetera by going thirty. So I think it's the sweet spot between what's technologically feasible and what's commercially viable. And it sounds like one of the beauties of this design is that you don't need any special infrastructure at the airports. You don't need a special plugin system. You can fly in and out of any aircraft because it's hybrid, it's powering itself. There certainly is an operation here where you could fly only with a hybrid system. We recommend actually charging the batteries because that's when you get to those superior unit economics. But you won't be stranded if you end up landing in an airport that doesn't have a charger. And I will also say that right now, it's kind of a truck started charging standard called the MCS standard that allows you to charge this plane in thirty minutes or less . But then there's also the more card charging standard , the fast charging standards that you find for your cars and that allows you to charge it overnight. So even if you get stuck somewhere, you can have a portable charger and charge it overnight or you can just fill it up with you . And are you able to use existing electric motors and existing battery systems or did you have to create not on the sort of component level on the technology level. Sos for instance, everything that goes into the high power electronics, obviously the supply chain that goes for rare magnets, et cetera. But electric motors are remarkably scalable. They're remarkably simple. They really have one moving part. So not to take anything away from a lot of talent and hard work that goes into designing electric motors for everybody including ourselves that is doing that. It's quite challenging, but I think it's still a different order of magnitude than designing a jet engine . And also that the great thing about that is that material wise, it's about on twentieth of the cost. You don't have any volatile fluids, you don't have any high temperat . You know, it's everything is done electromechanically. So it means that the electric motors don't really wear. You can design them to actually last for the life of the aircraft. So it's really the economic benefit is partially because electrons are cheaper than jet fuel, but it's also because of the large maintenance bills that regional jets have. And basically, you know, an overhaul of an engine can cost almost like an airframe. Yes, yes. And speaking of the airframe, what are you using for the X one and the ES thirty? Is an existing airframe that's modified? No, this is actually something that people look at it because it's quite conventional. And I urge anybody that's list ening to go on our social media sites and see the video of the aircraft taxiing right now. We're obviously only weeks away from flight , but it is people look at it and think it looks like an ATR or something like that , but it's not, it's not a retrofit. It's a clean sheet . And the reason is because if you're retrofitting something, you have all kinds of problems down the line. Like first of all, the sizing has to be different. You have to build a wing that is supporting like kind of a conventional fifty seater turbo prop with thirty passengers in. So the sort of mass ratios and all of this are different because you're carrying so heavy batteries . So generally what people do that retrofit and try to do that is that they put the batteries where the passengers are supposed to be. And then you can't really fly with passengers . So you really have to resize it from scale. And also , we have a large order book from the likes of you mentioned United Airlines, Air Canada, et cetera, and we want to be able to produce it. And we think going through that of building , building the structure and owning that and controlling that is obviously super important for our business . You mentioned an ATR just out of curiosity . If you were comparing the price point , I mean, I'm going to be the skeptic. What is this going to cost meanders? I mean, I know it looks good. It's going to run on batteries when it needs and it uses less jet fuel, but I mean I spent twenty million dollars buying the, you know, each of these ATRs. And so what's it going to cost me to have one of these? First of all, like the metric that airlines are looking at is operating costs. So how does it cost when you when you look into what is it cost to fuel? What is it cost and maintenance, et cetera? So all of those things, and that's where we're about forty percent better than an ATR on a per aircraft basis. But the thing that is and obviously then we have where we put the pricing and obviously a lot goes into building something like this and having a cogs where you can sell this at a healthy margin and run a business out of it. What exactly the aircraft is priced at? Is something that 's not public knowledge at this point ? We won't tell anybody What are all these microphones for? I don't know. They're just a few guys . Yeah. Anders, tell us a little bit about the team. How did you assemble expertise to come up with a clean sheet paper aircraft? Where do these people come from? What are their backgrounds? So the team is mostly based in LA . And while some of them are coming from legacy companies like Boeing, et cetera, a lot of them is coming from companies like SpaceX , companies like Tesla and Rivian And I think basically what we've tried to do and I've gone through a few iterations in team building. And what I think has happened and something that I really caught my attention is how much aerospace product development has changed in the last decade and how companies like SpaceX have shown that something can you can move a lot faster. You can work when they're risk in a different way , while still working in a very well regulated industry . So I think there's a new blueprint of hard tech that's developed in the LA ecosystem that I think is unique. And I think that is something that I feel we need to adopt as the aerospace industry if we want to get forward because if you look at so my background is I did my PhD at MIT. I was working with on jet engines. And we saw a place where that sort of iterative approach of changing materials, increasing bypass ratios , you know, increasing fan blade radius , that it was kind of hitting a wall, right? And the industry has gotten so used to working at that model, sort of taking the seven hundred seven blueprint that now has, you know, half a century old, if not more, and then optimizing on the part per part level and at the same time sort of outsourcing the innovation to different keeping the architecture and outsourcing the innovation to the different suppliers and vendors and mostly the engine OEMs. I think that model doesn't work anymore, right? I think what's needed now is an architectural overhaul of the basic elements of how aircraft work. That's how we get to the next sort of frontier. And that is electrification, hybridization, it is increas ed software capabilities on these aircraft building aircraft like computers on wings, enabling things for small aircraft like single pilot operation, autonomous cargo, et cetera . And for those things, you that is what sort of SpaceX has done a lot for the for the space industry. It's what companies like Tesla has done for the for the car industry. And that's certainly what we take in inspiration for when we're a small team trying to build a new architecture for an aircraft. Well, along those lines , what are you using for engines? Are they something off the shelf or something you've designed or something you've taken off the shelf and remodified for the electric motors, it's something that is not off the shelf. It's something that we've developed. For the turbo props, it's based on an established design that we're working with suppliers . We haven't announced our partner there yet, but we're certainly working on it. Yeah, to go clean sheet of paper on a turbo prop, that's that's a lot. It would be fun to do at one point. I mean, I did work on jet engines in the past. But yeah, it is definitely you don't try to build a new airframe and a new turbine at the same time. And certainly there's these are very good products that have been developed and refined over many decades. And yes, so I don't think that that's really something that should be a focus of startup in the first thing to focus on yeah, it's not that . So Anders, I we understand that the X one demonstrator has just recently done its taxi tests, low speed taxi tests. Yeah. And how is that coming? I mean, it's great . I mean, it's one of the steps that you know we have a low speed taxi, then we have high speed taxi where we're actually going up almost to the sort of takeoff speed of the aircraft , certainly feeling the air under your wings and kind of getting a sense for the flight controls . We have the FAA inspections of this is flying on an experimental license, but the FAA inspects it before it flies . And then we're up and away. So first flight is planned for sometime soon, right? Yes, it's within the next few weeks . Yeah, very good. Well, that'll be exciting. It'll be very exciting. It is a remarkable seeing an aircraft that you've drawn, you know, we started with a small three D printed desktop model sort of like a model aircraft with a vision and then working very hard with the team and building building this aircraft that is just massive when you look at it. So it's definitely definitely a different scale than anything else that we've seen coming out of startups . What's it like working with the FAA on certifications on something like this that is so unique? It's got to be really unus ual and difficult in some ways just because the FAA is such a huge administrative system . Yes, that's that's right. I think we're in an exciting. I mean, obviously we've, seen a lot of changes at the FAA only over the last few . Right now, obviously, our focus is the experimental type type certificate that we're getting for this aircraft. And I think they've been extremely supportive of that. They're very excited . People that are , you know, awarding experimental type certificates are not. They don't generally see the scale of aircraft and this level of innovation in aircraft. So I think that that's been very, very supportive and they're obviously doing a great job . We've also done a tremendous amount of testing on this aircraft that you don't really need to do for experimental type certificates. We've done system s testing, you know, like we've done a full full scale wing bend test, we've done shaker tables, atmospheric chambers, EMI, all of it, just because we want to learn. And then when we go into the to the formal FAA certification, we're right now in the familiarization stage with that. And our goal is to submit the formal TC within the next nine months and then be type certified within about five years from that. So twenty thirty one. So what are you looking at in terms of flight levels and airspeed once once it's complete and actually flying . Oh yes, so this is a slow flying aircraft. So it flies up to I think one hundred and eighty five knots . So that is basically it. So it's and that's really for missions that are flying these short flights, you know, you don't really need to go fast. What you really want to do is to be operate from airports where it's going to be the TSA, it's going to be getting to and from the airport that is affecting your door to door time. So it's really about creating an aircraft that can operate from conveniently either as a hub feeder or operating from a secondary to secondary airport. So speed is not really our focus here. And obviously speed is something you trade off with range on a battery this size. As for the service ceiling, it's about we would rally get over twenty thousand feet. So it's somewhere around there that we're gonna put it. When you fly these aircraft, you don't really get that high up in the air . No, it sounds like it's going to be perfect for commuter use like Portland to Boston or Boston to Philly or New York to Washington, that kind of thing. Just the perfect kind of plane for that those sort of houses. Yeah, I mean, you guys remember like this is not many decades ago where we had connectivity in this country that has just been lost, right ? There's five thousand airports in the US that are being maintained, that are being, you know, subsidized and we have two hundred of them are getting ninety nine percent of the traffic . So it's this like a lot of them have lost all connectivity , right? And the reason that planes that airports and communities lost connectivity was not about range, right? It was not because aircraft didn't fly far enough . It was because they couldn't operate with the right unit economics. So sometimes when you talk about electric aircraft, you tend to think a lot about range because batteries are heavy. But it's kind of a little bit of a red herring. You know, you could optimize for range, but you should also try to get adequate range while you can get something that is fundamentally great unit economics . And that's where something that is , you know, the physics are all there for making that happen , but the devil is into details when you're designing it, how you actually get to meet those unit economic requirements. So the mission of heart, you know, our mission as a company is simply to lower the cost of air travel . That is using technology. So whether it's electrification or increasing software, if it's about verticalization, many of the systems , finding ways that we can reduce the cost of air travel because we don't really know where technology is going to take us. It's hard to make bets on how the world we're accelerating technology . And it's hard to predict how the world is going to look like in ten or twenty years. But something that I think we can know for certain is that if you can reduce the price of them something that's going to be true in one hundred and maybe a thousand years. Anders as CEO , where do you spend most of your time or the bulk of it? Is it organizing the supply chain or working with the regulator or potential future customers or where do your efforts lie ? I mean, it's all of the above. It's basically I think people sometimes ask, What's the hardest part about building an aircraft? And they expect me to say one thing, but it is really like you're doing a hundred things, like a hundred things on the aircraft. You have like a hundred major systems on the aircraft. And they have a hundred other things that you need to do, anything from regulat ors to customers to, you know , running a company , to dealing with investors and raising funds and all of this stuff. And generally, my vision for like how do BCO is that you show up when something is breaking or when something is the bottleneck, that's where you spend your time . And you try to build a team so that you don't have to be the one like the normal operations should be should be running out of yourselves and you're just running around fixing the thing, which is just a bottleneck. So it can be very, very different from time to time. Do you run a video feed back to the home office so that the Oh yes, yes. We have something we have we have something called the portal to Plattsburg, which is our aircraft is in Plattsburg in upstate New York and we have a big screen TV like this kind of TV wall where we're just feeding a live feed and it makes you feel like you're in the hangar when you're when you're not. And it's just since we put that up, it's just better to go to work because you get to look at the aircraft even if it's even if it's in two D, it's still quite remarkable. Yeah, I was thinking of what SpaceX does with their employees when they have a launch, and you know, you can see the crowd that's not at the launch site, but gets to watch it on the screen and how they go crazy when something happens. I think that's something that is so true that and I think that we've we've somehow like if you can inspire employees, especially if you can inspire people that are extremely high performing , they tend to be very very, focused on mission . So if you can create something that they feel like, hey , and if you have that feeling yourself as well, that you're part of something historic, you're part of changing the world , then you can achieve tremendous things. And I think like most one of my trick, you know, speaking about what to do as a CEO is to find people that have that internal motivation that is just wants to work on airplanes, that wants to do this. And it's just remarkable. And when you get the right mix of people in a room and everybody's like working with somebody that has a knowledge that is complementary to their own knowled ge and they're kind of like in this, I used to actually play in bands. So I always think about if you're a great guitarist and you get to play with a great bass player and a great drummer, then that's amazing, right? So you want to create that sense with a company. And I think this is really what I think the problem we have in modern aviation is to figure out how to turn the talent tide , right? Because what aviation has golden history of attracting the best and the brightest to come work and build amazing aircraft in the last one hundred and twenty years . But in the last few decades, we haven't really had new products . And so if you're looking if you go to MIT or you go to Stanford or any great school or if you're just a talented engineer and you look at what to do and you're like, I can land you know rockets, you know, return them to orbit and land them, you know, with chopstick in taxes or I can go to work at a large commercial air space OEM where there's not even clarity that I, you know , that I get to build a plane. I mean, there's people that are my age that never been on a new aircraft program. You know, the last one was the dreamliner . And there is it's people that move this industry forward. It's people that build planes. You can't say this company has experience of building planes or motors or whatever part it is . A company in itself is just a fictional entity, right ? It doesn't really do anything . It's only when the company is staffed by people that are working on this mission that is that you actually get things done. And I think we talk about next generation products, but we need that next generation to be building planes. So whatever we can do to keep people building planes in this country that's how I think we aerospace can maintain its golden age and maintain competitive in this next century. Well, you know, and your company's been in business since twenty nineteen. That's seven years. That's not really very long . And you know, we've been doing this show for how long forty three years, I think , or some, I don't know . But we've all heard about EVTOLs. I realize it's a completely different category of aircraft, but we've been hearing about this one is going to be incredible . That one's going to be marvelous . And when this gets going, air taxis are , you know, we've been hearing this forever and here you guys have gotten to a point with a fairly good size aircraft and you're going to fly it in seven years . How did you guys get moving and get so far down the line when so many other builders are still talking about what it's going to do one of these days when they're when they really get going and when they actually fly Yeah, wow, that's that's a thank you for the compliment there. And yes, it's a lot of hard work. What I really 'll do anything to get an airplane ride. So yeah. No, what I really think is important that you do , it's very easy today like obviously startups have a certain amount of glamour to them. And I think it's very easy for a startup to make a nice render. You know, with AI you can make beautiful renders of aircraft they almost look real, right? And you could go out and say, you know, we're going to do something everything differently and we're much better and we're going to figure something out that everybody else has. And I think part of that is par for the course with startups. I think startups should always aim to take over the world. And the only way to know the limits of what's impossible is to do it. But pretty soon you have to figure out how do I sort of eat this elephant not whole but in chunks . And how do I create falsifiable milestones for myself ? And I think the word falsifiable is so important here. It's like how do I create something where I actually know for that I'm progressing ? And for us, it was this, okay, we're going to do this iterative approach. We're going to build one aircraft. We're going to fly it. That's an undeniable proof point that we at least know some of what we're going to be doing to bring this and then figure out what's the next point to next point, you know? And I think this is this goes overall. And I think it's very , this is a kind of behavior that in traditional aerospace is not encouraged because you don't want to really be doing anything until you know everything. So I think rather than trying to minimize uncertainty, you should try to manage uncertainty , but hold yourself accountable and create falsifiable goals . And obviously we realized that when you're hearing somebody saying, you know, right now, I don't know if you guys watch soccer, but it's the World Cup. And you know, there's forty eight teams that go in there and they all think they're going to win the thing and they all say that they're going to win it. And in the end of it, it's one, right? And that's kind of the startup world as well. You know, some people get eliminated in the group stage. Some people move , you know, move forward and forward to the quarterfinals and my finals and the final. And it's kind of like that with startup. You see a lot of a lot of them coming out making promises, then you see some of them fly, then you see some of them make commercial inroads, then you see some of them approach certification . We haven't really seen anything except for I guess the pipestrol aircraft that is certified now and in service. But yeah, it's just a different world where I think risk is tolerated . It's diametrically oppos ed to a lot what's happening in the legacy industries. Andrews, do you have any advice for someone who is maybe younger and hasn't entered the industry yet, who is looking at companies like Heart or at some of the others and sees themselves participating in that kind of activity. Do you have any advice for them in terms of education, preparing themselves , making themselves competitive in an employment opportunity like that . Well, I would say well if you're talking about young people , I think find the thing that motivates you . Be really passionate about the technology. I think there's my I think there's a golden opportunity right now because of like how cheap and ubiquitous drone technolog y is today . You know, there's things that are on a you know, two hundred dollars drones that are not on , you know , not on a narrow body airliner today. They're very, very advanced. There's, you know, the sky's the limit, literally, maybe not even the sky's the limit for what you can do with just cheap technology and building blocks and try to learn the fundamentals . Try to like what I did , I used to work on jet engines and I was very much a researcher that came in and tried to do a little bit of knopizing on the sort of detailed design level, but never really understood all the way down to the trunk of the tree. So I really believe in that sort of you build that knowledge tree, you build that semantic tree. So build one aircraft, you know, even if it's a small RC plane and dabble a little bit with motors and batteries and programming and flight controls and all of this stuff and you learn a little bit of everything . And what I learned by doing that is not I'm not , you know, I consider myself knowledge wise. A bit of a duck . Have you heard the expression ? So a duck can fly a little bit , it can, you know, swim a little bit, and it can walk a little bit, but it doesn't do anything of that very well. Yeah . So that's a little bit how I think of my knowledge based. I try to build myself as an expert journalist. And what that allows me to do is easily identify the people that are stronger than me because I know a little bit. I walked a mile in their shoes and I can see if they're good or if they're great . And that is just and also enough to earn the respect of the people that are stronger than me because I understand their craft . So yeah, I think learn about technology . Don't just think that it's about sitting sitting, you know, sitting off your , you know, the years in the office and building experience in the number of years, but it's like beyond programs, build stuff , you know, put things to testing, put things on shaker tables, try to understand. And yeah, study the history of aviation, I think is another thing. Study, study the greats from the past , I think is another good tip. Fun question. It's good advice. And you know, when I when I started aviation career forty years ago or however long it's been, you know, I would have answered that question differently because I think times have changed and thinking about a question like that, you know, in the context of the times that you're in is critical. If you try to relive some prior times, it's just not going to it's it's just not going to work very well for you . Yeah . So for folks that want to follow along with heart aerospace and the progress being made, you mentioned that the demonstrator is likely to take a first flight in a couple of weeks, I guess . Yeah, hopefully . And how do people stay current with that? Yeah, I would follow us on social media. So LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, all of these things, hard aerospace. It's HE ART just like the thing that's in our chests. Yeah . So earlier today , I asked you the question is where did Heart Aerospace? Where did the name come from? You had kind of an interesting response ? Yeah, I mean, actually , I had a friend of mine ask, come up to me and be like, Yeah, I figured it out. It's hybrid electric aircra ft for regional transport, right ? And I said, sure , that sounds great . But yeah, I mean a law goes to any name of a company, especially for this name . And I think with among many other reasons, I think it's reflecting of the love we feel for aerospace. Very good. Yeah. And the love that we want to bring in to that passion that we want to bring in to this industry. And now there's a what do you call that a mnemonic or an acronym that I can help? It's a acronym. Yeah, yeah. Acronym. Yeah, very good. All right . Well, Anders Forestland, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. We're really excited for the possibilities that Heart is looking to bring to the industry and we'll for sure follow along with you. Thank you so much. I'm excited to be on this on this show and let me know if I get invited back at one point after we fly or something, I can tell you all about it. Yeah, we'd love to help you get over that. Can't wait to see it fly. Remingember that the PWM is only one hundred and fifty miles or so from Plattsburgh, so it's a great place to test it . Very good. Thanks again. Sounds good. All right, we'll see ya. All right, thank you . All right, now for some of the aviation news from the past week , an item from Paddle Your Own Canoe . Rob, here we go again. This is horrifying near miss at Boston Logan as quick thinking Delta Air pilots go around to avoid landing on top of American Airlines Boeing seven hundred and thirty seven. And this was a near near disaster and about as close as you can come without the aircraft exchanging paint, as they used to say . And of course we had the audio up there too for everybody to listen to. I'm sure we'll put that in the show notes, but it what was really frightening is that you hear the local controller, the guy working take offs and landings , they were landing two seven and departing on thirty three left and you hear the controller , move , click for takeoff turn left here, Contact Ground , call departure . And right in the middle he goes , you know, American thirty one sixty one twenty seven click for takeoff. And then he goes back to speak with a few others and delta of course Delta twenty three fifty one clear to land three left and you could just hear the various cogs in the wheel turning and then all of a sudden you hear the delta Captain or whoever is working the radio saying, Delta twenty three fifty one, we're going around on three, three left because of the because of American . And it's like somebody , some poor person in the tower slapped the controller in the face and he said American, where you going? And the American's crew said real quickly, bud you, cleared us for takeoff. And you don't hear there's no argument from the controller, but you could just see him going holy , you know, but and that's how it happens sometimes . You get busy and you know what you're doing, you see what's going on and something just you know we hear about this all the time with pilots, you know, pilot air, they just lost the piece of a situational awareness and I'm sure that's what happened here unless there was something extraordinary going on in the tower cab, but didn't sound like there was from the audio , but again , this was really, really close. When I listened to the well, there was one report I heard later today that said there was about I think three hundred feet separation between the two aircraft. I don't know if that's been verified or whatever, but to your point, Robin, when I was listening to the air traffic recording , and when I heard the controller say like you said American, where are you going ? I mean that doesn't sound like professional controller speak . You know, it's funny. You're not the first person to say that since I was sharing some of this story with friends and I told them that in the old days I was a controller when we wanted to be sarcastic with some body and we're looking at an aircraft and wondering, what this Samuel Hill like? I asked him to do this. I gave him that instruction . And you want to say, Dummy, what are you doing? And that's what that's what people would use. I'm sorry, I have to admit, I used it a few times myself . And I was critic , I won't say criticized. I was whacked in the back of the head by the supervisor. He said, What the hell? You know what are you doing? But there's nothing that gets through the static in the radio more than, you know , six, three golf, where you going ? Because it's like I know something you don't you're a dummy . And of course that, you know, I think it probably certainly isn't professional, but I think at that point the controller was he was just dumbfounded about how this could have happened. And it's not until he went back and listened to the recording, I'm sure shortly after he got off position that he said , Oh my God , I did that . And there's nothing there's no easier way to say it. You screwed up. In fact, in air traff ic control language, we call that having a deal . And a deal is you got two too close together, either when they're out in the airspace somewhere or on crossing runways or on the same runway . And that's how you'd know somebody was having a really, really bad day. You know , Tom had a deal. Oh my god, and everybody knew immediately it was bad. It was bad. The good news is that Delta saw it before they touch down because yeah, two seven crosses three, three left at between twenty two thousand three hundred, two thousand six hundred feet from the threshold of three left. And you don't sit down on the threshold. I mean, how many thousands hundreds of feet do you usually sit down from the from the end of the runway? It would have been really I mean, it would have been a disaster. Well, sure , because I doubt Delta would have it probably had the manes on the ground, maybe with the nose just about coming down to the runway at that point. And of course, if they had seen American out of the right corner of the cockpit window, I mean, there'd have been nothing anybody could do American wasn't ready to fly and Delta wasn't ready to stop . So maybe this is speculating, but what do you think is going to happen with that controller? Is that the controller in really hot water right now or sure , absolutely. I mean, but of course the F,AA is trying to walk the talk that they've been giving pilots for years that it's not our goal to try to , you know, really punish you significantly. The goal is to learn from the mistake and what led to this moment . I mean, what was going on in now we don't know how long the controller was on position . He might have been there for twenty minutes. He might have been there two hours. And maybe it was a really busy session and the Soop said, well, can you work a little longer? I got somebody's late or who knows what? But they'll they'll be saying to the just like a pilot, was there something going on in your life that maybe you were somewhat dist racted from your job at the time that this occurred . But again, the NTSB's going to be diving into this one. And we'll probably see a preliminary report within a few, you know, within a month, I'm sure, just like a regular accident . Yeah, yeah, there's a lot we don't know, but in terms of root cause and all of that . What do you think it was like in the in the Delta cockpit when you know, when the pilot or the pilots saw that there was this approaching disaster and then executed the go round? Well, they did a really good they did a really fine job of the go around and I'm sure as they're climbing out the non flying pilots looking at the flying pilot or I'm sorry the, other way around because it was probably the guy that wasn't flying that noticed it. I bet. But it might not have been, might have been the flying pilot, but somebody says, Whoa , thank you, buddy , because that, you know, that's where the teamwork comes in . Because if you're doing all the work of , you know, flying the airplane, trying to get it down on the ground in one piece and get it stopped, I mean you can't see everything out of your peripheral vision. So but again, that's why we have two pilots . But in a situation where it was a single pilot in an airplane , they might not have noticed that that guy taken off on two hundred and seven. But of course, you know, we mentioned situational awareness and they're both on the same frequency and that is part of flying too. When you're landing, you're here and you're here in the tower clear somebody for takeoff and and you go, where's that guy at ? You know or maybe when you're on a mile final , somebody says, Didn't he clear an American for takeoff? Where is that guy? You know, it could have been that kind of conversation happening too . And somebody said, I don't know, but I don't see him. Let's go around , baby. And then, you know, somebody may have seen the aircraft rolling. That's an interesting comment, Robbie, that because everybody hears all of the, you know, the radio chatter, everything that's going on there on the radio . I guess I always sort of assumed that a pilot would just sort of focus on what they are doing. You know, in this case they are landing. But what you're saying is that you know, there's this, you know, this whole airport wide basically convers ations going on and it as a as a pilot if you can stay attuned to all that other stuff that it might save your bacon rather than just focus only on your own. So I wonder how hard it is for a pilot to maintain that broader situational awareness. Well, I think it depends on a lot of things. If not just the traffic , but if the weather's really bad and you're really focused on the situation at hand trying to keep the needles centered and you know worrying that maybe there's only a half mile visibility. And again, if that had been the case and the pilot who noticed this saw the other aircraft as opposed to heard it and said , Wh isere that guy This situation would have been much worse because you'd have never seen that other airplane coming. Yeah . All right, moving on . This is from Flight Global . Electra reveals hundred seat hybrid electric aircraft concept . This is kind of a juxtaposition between what Elektra is working on here and what we just heard from Heart Aerospace, the difference between a concept , drawings on paper versus actually building something. And so this story is about concept a con,cept . And what Elektra is developing this concept is under a NASA program. It's the Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability twenty fifty AACES, which I imagine is called AC's , I guess . And in this case , NASA commissioned industry in academia to and this is a quote, develop transformative aircraft designs, propulsion technologies, and sustainability solutions for commercial aviation by twenty fifty . So this is looking out pretty far . So this is a larger aircraft obviously than Hart is working towards. There's a regional thirty seat aircraft. This is a hundred seat aircraft, also hybrid electric. But they're not going to build it. But they're not going to build it. It's just, yeah, it's concepts. Yeah, it's the drawing. It's well, it's not even a drawing anymore. It's all in the computer, right? Yes, yes. So this particular concept , and we've seen this in the past, I reckon recall that it features a double bubble fuselage , meaning that it's sort of like if you took two cylindrical fuselages and put them next to each other and kind of smooth them out. It's sort of that sort of shape in this particular case and I think others have also proposed a similar kind of design where the fuselage becomes itself becomes more of a generator of lift. I don't think he'd necessarily call it a lifting body. I think that's even more maybe I'm not sure. But in any event, this double bubble fuselage idea generates generates lift . And what they're describing is two turbo fans under the wings produce thrust and electricity and then three fans mounted on the top of the aft fuselage . And Electric says that under this concept, those fans would quote ingest and re energize slower moving air over the fuselage, a technique known as boundary layer ingestion. So again, this is a this is a story about looking into the future and imagining technologies that really don't exist, which I think is a good thing to do . I think you need to kind of dream as well, but you also need to build and that's what that's what Heart is doing. There's other participants in or under this AS program, the Georgia Institute of Technology is working on something they call it the liquefied natural gas powered Athena Aircraft Concept , which sort of looks like halfway towards a blended wing body kind of kind of a concept. It's kind of fat but not like fully fully fat, if you will. Jet Zero was also working on or under this program that's on a hydrogen fueled , definitely a blended wing body design . So we'll put some links in the show notes to this NASA program , this ASAS program, which where you can see some of these concepts and learn more about what NASA is trying to to do through this program . A military aviation item from the war zone. Micah, this is Congress Questions Air Force Combat Rescue Readiness as H sixty W helicopters get turned into VIP transports . Yeah, last week we talked about Congress wanting to keep the A ten predominantly for CSAR, that's combat search and rescue and how we really needed that. And now the Senate Armed Services Committee is concerned that the Air Force is transferring its H eight sixty Ws , known as the Pave Hawk, I believe , also the Jolly Green two. And those are CSAR aircraft that work with the A ten S and the I think it's the HC one hundred thirty ' s. If I if I get this wrong, David, correct me, you know, I expect that. They are transferring them to the air force to be used at the what's known as the AFDW, which is the Air Force District of Washington , which is used primarily for transporting VIPs . Now the aircraft that was designed to transport the VIPs is the Boeing MH one hundred thirty nine Grey Wolf, which is a variant that Boeing builds of the Leonardo AW thirty n ine, but apparently those aren't coming in quick enough, so they're transferring a lot of the H sixty's, the Pave Hawks to the Service for VIP transport and the Senate Armed Services Committee is saying that we don't have enough aircraft, enough helicopters to do CSAR work in the event that we really need them and we need to start looking at that. And I just basically put it in the show notes because it goes along with what they were saying about the A ten and needing a combat aircraft to do CSAR as well. Apparently, this is a mission the Air Force does not like to do. Yeah, this comes you mentioned, Micah, the Senate Armed Services Committee . There's a Senate bill the national, well, it's under the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year twenty twenty seven . And which of course establish es funding levels and authorities for the U. S. military . And there is a report that the committee has put out, which we'll have a link to that in the show notes, certainly , where they expressed concern about the combat, search and rescue CSR force structure in the Air Force. And they mentioned that the Air Force has reduced or truncated their buy of H sixty Ws. They also talk about some of them, as Micah mentioned, have been transferred out to this Washington DC office to replace the H one helicopter s. And the committee thinks that these actions have left the CSAR forces unnecessarily short of the forces needed to support CSAR operations in a major contingency . So David is there anything else coming down the line or for this type of operation? Is it the H sixty's that are the right aircraft for the job . Well, no one said that the H sixty W was the greatest object of , but it was commonality . I guess this goes back to Andrews Air Force Base and the first helicopter squadron which currently flies , believe it or not, UH one ends, which is the probably the oldest helicopters now in military service and their job to support the Senate , the Congress , the Pentagon flying around DC flying around the District of Columbia , D. C. It's kind of the presidential flight for the Pentagon . The Army has a couple of H sixty's that they use for what they call Golden Hawks, which are again for VIP's , but primarily the Air Force is designed is Gaza First Helicopter Squadron. Now, if anybody in the first helicopter squadron is getting rid of their UH one N and would like to have a place for it . I'm going to volunteer a certain museum . That would be on my bucket list . But the Air Force originally purchased and I'm kind of fond of this helicopter because it's made right around the corner from us at the museum , which is the Leonardo or Boeing MH one hundred and thirty nine Greyhawk. Now that's primarily being used for out west as the helicopter to transport people to and from and to support the military ranges like where we have strategic missiles, which is like and those are coming off the line but they're not com ing off quick enough . The MH sixty program the H sixty program to consolidate what we had was MH sixty Gs and And H sixty 's and to update all of them with avionics, et cetera . One of the arguments about the H sixty is not a long range What the Air Force, I think , is looking at is the Army currently is going to replace the H sixty with a tilt rotor and that which is going to be the Commandi the Air Force might want to jump on that program . Likewise the only other CSSR support aircraft that the Air Force has besides the eight hundred sixty is the CV twenty two , which is which is the Osprey . But we lost at least two H sixties overseas in the most recent conflict. So they're a high risk, high value aircraft . The V two they were operating in an environment where V twenty two couldn't operate , and they're also transportable by C seventeen. You can load a couple of them up and transform them quickly across the country , whereas we're overseasas, where the V twenty two has to self transport . So we deployed a lot of these in the Middle East during the Iraq War and we lost quite a few of them and clearly we are in a position to lose anymore because we're going to have deficits across across the globe for search and rescue . The biggest the , you know, and the Air Force does not like helicopters. They that's not something they want to do , but one of their proudest services is the search and rescue , you know, and that is where the Air Force's bread and butter is, no matter what, even they like bombers and stuff . The most thing is the recovery of our pilots when they're shot down behind lines, you know , and that's why the H sixty got the W got the title Jolly Green Giant two because that was based on the Jolly Green Giant, which was the CH fifty three H three and then the Super Jolly, which was the CH fifty three in Vietnam . And their mission continued through now the Jolly two . But clearly the Air Force is kind of under delusions that they don't need helicopters , and it's much more important to have VIPs fly around DC than it is to be able to have the equipment to rescue our pilots. And wasn't the NH sixty used to recover the wasn't there an F fifteen pilot in Iran ? The HH sixties, we lost two of them in the process of recovering the two F fifteen pilots that went down over the F fifteen E pilots that went down in Iraq . That was some of the attributes Iraq or Iran . Iran sorry . That was some of the losses of the aircraft. We lost a couple of MC one hundred and thirty ' s, we've lost a couple of H six's all in recovering two pilots considering the amount of equipment we lost , but the pilots are the most important thing. The helicopters can be replaced. The one hundred thirty's can be replaced , but we are learning in high contested environments a lot of our equipment that we have thought would last are inevitably becoming disposable because when you have eight sixty's on the ground and they're getting shot up , you get the pilots out and the crews out and you don't worry and blow up the aircraft because the aircraft isn't that important . But if you don't have that many aircraft behind that one that you just blew up, then you've got a serious issue. And I got to admit Congress is right with this , you know, and I'm not sure what the generals are thinking other than their own convenience comfort because they don't like taking cars around the DC area . None of us do. I know it's horrible. The traffic around DC is just terrible . Well, another military story, this one back to the North American continent. This comes from Military Watch magazine. Canada plans fleet surge to one hundred and forty plus fighters as low cost grippins replace reduce expenses . And Mike, this comes from quote informed sources, but the Royal Canadian Air For ce is planning to grow its fleet of fighters to one hundred and forty , possibly purchasing SOB Grippin jets. Yeah, originally , the Canadian Air Force was going to buy eighty eight F thirty five A . That's the Air Force version of the F thirty five . And it looks like they have changed that where it's, again, it's informed sources saying that they'll only take seventy F thirty five S and they're going to buy seventy Grippens , Swedish Grippens, the E and the F for a number of different reasons , primarily because they a lot're less expensive than the F thirty five and also because Sob has said that they will work with the Canadian Air Force and build them in Canada , which will give Canada a lot more control over fighter fleet . Now, the other underlying reason behind this is probably because Canada governmental relations between Canada and the USA has deteriorated some over the past few years and Canada is not comfortable doing business with the USA. And on top of that, also over the last few years , Sweden has become a member of NATO. So it's a NATO jet that is being used Can,ad anda is also a member of NATO . So it changes things a little bit , and it's going to again change the prices of the F thirty five, which the fewer you make, the more expensive they are per aircraft. David, the F thirty five and the Gripen, they're not direct competitors , right? No, it's a high low, it's a high low purchase system . The Gripen is a fourth generation fighter. The ENF primarily designed by SOB for production in Brazil for the Brazilian Air Force . They are producing the E and EF. That's the most advanced version. The F being the two seater, the E being the single seat . The Gripin is a highly qualified aircraft . They're going to be the Swedes have sent some already to the Ukraine . They eventually will send some more Es and F's over . It's a delta wing aircraft with if you don't have never seen a Gripin. It's a single engine delta wing aircraft with Canards and a very effective aircraft and the SAB weapon systems are very effective . Remember that SAB for the longest time was a neutral country and tended to produce their own aircraft for precisely that reason. They did not . Canada used to have a multiple aircraft fighter force . However with the F eighteen coming aboard, they the F eighteen eliminated the F one hundred four, the F five , and the F one hundred one all as aircraft to be replaced by one aircraft, the F eighteen Their F eighteen's are early block F eighteen s and then they went ahead and purchased all of Australia's legacy hornets . So their fleet of F eighteen ' gettings is very is getting older, even though they are supplemented by the Australian aircraft . And actually it's probably a good idea to have a high and a low mix for cost effectiveness and And having a fleet of one type of fighter is probably never the best thing. So if you can imagine we're not getting rid of F sixteen . So the F sixteen is and the Grippin are kind of capable are comparable aircraft. So it's like us having F sixteen's and F thirty five's in Canada it would be the Grippin , which will help their productions of aircraft in their aircraft industry and the F thirty five for high end conflicts. So I think it's a good choice for Canada to not put all your eggs in one basket . And as Micah mentioned the offer is to do final assembly in Canada, but not just that, but also maintenance and long term industrial support . So there will be a tech nology transfer to Canada as a result of that. The F thirty five, of course, is not built in Canada . And item that some people find very important is that the software updates originate only out of the United States. So foreign buyers of F thirty five's don't control the software of the aircraft that they own , some which find to be really a difficult situation . So that wouldn't be the case with the Grippins should that deal go through . But there's more news Canada . And Micah , the prime minister, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced that Canada would not purchase early warning radar planes from the United States. Yeah, rather than going with the U. S. aircraft, again, they're going with SOB and they're going to be buying the SOB global eye , which is actually based on the Canadian Bombardier Global six thousand five hundred . So it works out again for Canada to be able to do things in house and have a really decent surveillance plane and and do it in house, do it a little less expensively. The Sob Global Eye is known to be a good aircraft. And again, it's in house. It's going to be a lot less expensive and give them what they need . And at this point, no one's talking price or fleet size on this and similar to what we were just saying, but the grip and the sob in a statement said that if there was a deal, any kind of a deal the company would invest in research and development work in Canada . So you really can't underestim the value to purchasers buying internationally if the OEM or the government offers industrial contribution to the to the program in count because you're talking about jobs, sometimes you're talking about technology transfer and all that has huge, huge value . So I mean certainly all things about being equal if they were the buyer's always going to go with whoever offers the purchaser , you know, a slice of the pie. And that has a big, a big impact. So again, we see sob going down that p ath All right, what's up with the geeks ? Let's see, David , do you have something for us? It's not often that I generally reach out to anything, but I need some help . We are in the process of redesigning our front lawn of the museum and we are in going to mount our AH one cobra on a plinth or a pedestal . We have no aircraft that are mounted like this . And I was hoping that maybe out of our billions of listeners out there , there have been some volunteers or people affiliated with their Veterans of Foreign Wars unit or their local museum where they actually mounted an aircraft onto a pedestal . And if they can , if they've had that experience , who did they use, what it was the process more importantly, what was the cost ? And I'm welcoming you to if you have any of that information or have had some experience or you know, you've just it's happened so much. There's got to be people out there who have that experience . Everybody's got a gate guardian out at their airport . So we're looking to do that. We're looking to kind of make a memorial out of our H one . And so we're in the preliminary portions of that . But so if you can reach out to me at David at helicoptermuseum. org , I would really appreciate it because I'm trying to get everything together so we can start running costs , et cetera , so we can make this happen. reaching out for everybody to send me some information. If you know somebody who's done it or contractors, et cetera . That's what I'm looking for. David, is this gonna be like an outdoor gateguard for the museum as you drive up? Yeah . Yeah. I'm curious and maybe this is what you're looking for too, but how do you weatherproof something like that so it can survive out there . It's a helicopter. It's an army helicopter. It sits outside all the time . Okay . You know, you know, military aircraft they live outside. So it's, but it's an interesting engineering problem, right? I mean , where do you mount it? You know, how do you position the plane on the pedestal? And how do you ensure that a big wind doesn't blow it all over someday? I mean, it's yeah, it's and it happens all the time aircraft are constantly put on pedestals, but if you're looking to do it and you don't really have any contacts, I mean again, , all of our helicopters are currently either in the museum or if they're out they're out on the front lawn on blocks , concrete blocks that we've sunk down. But in this case we, want it to be elevated so we can see it on the street . And basically I'm just starting, you know, and it's like, okay, how do we what do we got to do ? Who actually does it? Where do we get the cranes to lift it, et cetera? So yeah, interesting. Well , keep us informed and pass along what you learned because I think it's kind of an interesting interesting question. Are you going to have it weather vane? No , okay is that pretty complicated No, it's just where it's going . Having it turned will end up hitting helic ars, et cetera. I got you and I don't and I yeah it and I don't think a cobra would be make the best weather vane and that would require too much circumf erence to make it be able to turn all the way three hundred and sixty and we don't have that room. Does anybody do that with gate guards? I don't I don't think I Oh yeah. Really? Oh yeah. I have seen beaches and stuff that or primarily it's all civilian aircraft at local airports, but quite a few of them have made them into weather veins. Really? You need bearings and stuff. And I mean, that's a bigger. Remember a number of years ago when they were building or you could actually on eBay, you could buy a seven hundred and twenty seven as a home , you know? And they were they weather veined as a home. They were designed to turn really Yeah. Gee . Okay Micah , what's up? Well, speaking of putting planes on a pedestal, I always hold this like David, I hold the C one hundred thirty high on a pedestal. I love the air plane. And today around one o'clock, I'm driving down Jetport Plaza Road and that's the road that parallels runway one eight twenty nine . And I see just off from the distance out of the corner of my eye, I see this aircraft making what appears to be a really unstable approach. I mean, it's making a really tight, right turn from the south to line up with one eight. And I go, no, no, no, this can't be right. This must be some young pilot that's just learning how to fly because this is definitely an unstable approach. And then I looked just a little closer and I could see, oh yeah, and it's way off in the distance and I recognize it right away. It's a C one hundred thirty. I just got a better glimpse of it. And there it goes. It was just beautiful. Pulled over to the side of the road and watched it land. It was doing touch and goes. Well, what was really interesting is that the two cars behind me slowed down and didn't even get ahead of me by the time it was still on the road by the time it landed and took off again because they also were really interested in watching it. It was just made my day. It was great. Cool. That's the sign of a true airplane geek if you pull off over the side of the road to watch an airplane land. And I think we all do that. Yeah. And then the other thing is that episode one hundred thirty six of The Journey is reward was released this week and in it, Brian and I talked with Julian Keele, who's the founder and CEO of Pointspath. Points Path is one of our favorite tools when we're making commercial flight reservations. It kind of lets you know whether it's cheaper to use points if you have points for that airline or to pay for the ticket. It's a great system and it's free . Now this episode , good portion of the view aired on the airplane geeks right here on this show on the Memorial Day show. But if you missed it, you can catch it on the journey is reward. org and there's a few more bits and pieces in there that we didn't put in the Airplane Geeks show, Memorial Day Show. But if you end up liking Points path and you can get it for free, but if you like it enough that you want all the extended uses of it, Julian was kind enough to give us a discount for airplane geeks listeners on your first year's subscription and you just use geeks fifteen when you're subscribing and you'll get a fifteen percent discount off your first year subscription. So give it a listen. All right . And let's see, shout outs . This little see, where are we? This is june twenty second as we recorded. It's probably the last shout out on this event, Micah . Well, it's the last shout out on two events. The last shout out this year for Isaac Alexander, one of our favorite airplane geeks. It's his birthday this week. And we've got to wish him a happy birthday. I mean, he's been a guest on the show. He's been a long time listener. He's a great guy. And so this is the last time we'll be saying it this year, Isaac, you'll have to wait till next year to hear Happy Birthday from all of us. Happy birthday . We love Isaac. So happy birthday, Isaac. And then the other thing I wanted to mention and we may be able to get it out a couple more times before now and then, but Saturday and Sunday, july eleventh and twelfth is the Great State of Maine Air Show at the Brunswick Executive Airport, the former Brunswick Naval Air Station . The blue angels will be there. The red arrows will be there. Did I say red arrows? Red arrows will be there , the F thirty five demo team and the C seventeen demo team. And you know, I was wondering today. I was thinking, do you think they might all fly in form ation down the runway? Boy, wouldn't that be cool to see? Wow , I don't know. I don't know. But anyway, that's july eleventh and twelfth, and that'll be fun, but the really fun one is Sunday july twelfth, from eight AM until eleven thirty in the morning . The twenty ninth annual Spur Wink Farm, pancake breakfast and fly in is going to be held. And this is just a wonderful fly in on Spurwink farm. If you go there on the Friday before, it's kind of like a hayfield with cows and horses in the pasture. And then you go there the Saturday before the show and it's all been mowed down and it's now it's a landing strip, a grass field. Planes come in from all over the east coast. You can walk right up to them, visit them, talk with the pilots. A lot of hanger talk, but in the hangar is fresh blueberry pancakes or plain panca kes and butter and maple syrup and oh my gosh and it's the real maple syrup. It's the kind I sent Rob in a little package a couple of years ago so we could have real main maple syrup and it's good stuff . So if you get a chance to see that the afternoon, you can go up to the Air Show up in Brunswick or just head to the beach. Haggins Beach is right there and you can see it from the airfield from the from the fly in. So it's just it's a perfect morning. And Max, you gonna make it, you think? You know yet? There's a good chance there's a pretty good chance, yeah, yeah . But yeah, I remember the if you walk down towards as I recall , sort of the end of the airfield, what I would call the end of the airfield. And you walk down there, you've got a beautiful view because you're up high overlooking that beach down there . And I guess the town, is that if I remember correctly, but is this a really, really scenic spot? Yeah, the air show, well, the flying itself is in Cape Elizabeth, but you're looking at the beach and the next town over is Scarborough. That's coming right off the Spur Wink River. Yeah . And the cows are interesting too, right? Those I remember those do they call those belted cows ? Oreo cows. Oreo cows. Yeah, that's what I call 'em. That's what I call them too. Yeah, yeah. Those are so they d ip them in milk . No, I guess the other way around . The Ohio chant, what's round on the ends and high in the middle? This is what's brown on the ends and white in the middle. Yeah, yeah. They're pretty fun. If you haven't seen them before, they're pretty fun. All right, well that we'll wrap it up and thank you for listening. We want to thank our guests this episode, Anders Forceland , the co founder and CEO of Heart Aerospace. You can find their website heart aerospace. com. We'll have that in the show notes. Also their YouTube channel watch that. There is a video up as of this moment of the slow speed taxi of the of the prototype . And I'm sure as soon as the first flight occurs it'll be up there as well. So set a notification if you want to catch that as soon as it's out . And of course, you can find us at airplane geeks dot com Our email address, the geeks at airplane geeks dot com All right, Rob, where do folks find you Jetwine. com and stories about flying. com and it doesn't get any simpler than that . Or shorter. That was the short yeah, I thought I'd try that. Is there going to be a new stories about flying sometime soon? Yes. We had a minor minor technical setback that I'm not going to defend myself with, but it's almost finished. Not quite for tonight though . Okay, good. We look forward to those are great. I love that podcast. Thank you. Rob, yeah, you're doing a bang up job . Also , David Vanderhoef, where do we find you? You can find me on Blue Sky, you can find me on Instagram . You'll have to work on finding me on Instagram because I'm not under Vanderhof. And you could find me at the American Helicopter Museum . And again , anybody who wants to reach out and has some experience on putting helicopters on large chunks of rock, let me know. Good . And our main man, Micah . Well, you can find me with Pasadena Brian Coleman on the journey is reward. org podcast, and also I'm on EX Twitter and Bluesky as Maine Fly. And I'm Max Flight. You can find out where I hang out online by visiting thirty thousand feet dot com So please join us next week as we talk aviation on the airplane geeks podcast. Bye everybody . Nighty night . See you real soon and thanks for listening