• 01 Jul 2020 11:44 PM
• 0

VFS Holds Virtual Events with Great Success

By Jim Sherman, Director of Strategic Development
Vertiflite, Jul/Aug 2020

COVID-19 lockdowns provided opportunities to innovate.

Electric VTOL Infrastructure Workshop Held Virtually

On March 9, a week before the 2nd VFS “Workshop on Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) Infrastructure for Urban Air Mobility (UAM)” was to kick off at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey, the state governor declared a state of emergency and the university closed its campus. Within a few weeks, the Society had invested time and resources into the GoToWebinar platform, pivoting to a virtual program and converting many of the planned presentations and panels to a webinar format. It took some careful but quick planning by the organizers to create the program, but the rewards were well worth the effort. The workshop transformed into four separate and unique 90-minute weekly programs, running from April 15 through May 6, providing important background information to keep the momentum going.

Our review of the workshop agenda highlighted the opportunity to disseminate excellent content to a wide audience in four areas: building/electrical code for vertiports, weather technology, noise and acoustics, and community engagement. The team responsible for putting this outstanding program together was Cliff Johnson of the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) William J. Hughes Technical Center and VFS infrastructure advisor Rex Alexander.

Each session featured three or four experts in infrastructure technology and development, and included a question and answer component. The webinars were free, due to the generous support of our sponsors — Gannett Fleming, Deloitte, Uber and PS&S — and each session had 200 to 350+ attendees.

A link to this workshop page — which includes PDF files of the presentations, the written questions and answers, and video recordings of the webinars — can be found on the VFS eVTOL Infrastructure web page (www.vtol.org/infrastructure), which now highlights our 3rd Workshop on eVTOL Infrastructure for UAM, planned for Sept. 1–3, in Wildwood, New Jersey, near the FAA Tech Center.

Postponement of Forum 76 Created an Opportunity

Following the successful introduction of the webinar format to the VFS portfolio, and the postponement of Forum 76 to October, we decided to offer some of the previously planned programming as a series of webinars during the originally scheduled Forum 76 dates. This content, which would normally be featured in special sessions at the Forum, was presented across three days, May 19– 21, for a nominal fee. The first day of these special sessions highlighted updates from the US Navy/Marine Corps and the US Army. Dr. John “JT” Tritschler of the US Naval Test Pilot School moderated the Navy session that highlighted research and technology efforts by the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) and Office of Naval Research (ONR). In addition, the MQ-8 Fire Scout program manager provide an update, and the US Marine Corps Warfighting Lab explained the USMC Transformative Vertical Lift Strategy, to leverage developments in electric VTOL. Mr. Patrick Mason, the Program Executive Officer (PEO) Aviation, moderated the US Army session, which featured updates on the key PEO rotary-wing programs (see “Mixing Modernization,” Vertiflite, Jul/Aug 2020).

The second day highlighted the Army’s Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program. The first session was moderated by Col. Jay Hopkins of the FVL Cross Functional Team. Col.(P) Robert Barrie, the Deputy PEO Aviation, provided opening remarks followed by updates by the program managers for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA), Future Long Range Assault Aircraft (FLRAA) and Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). The second session of the day, moderated by Dr. Bill Lewis, US Army (ret.), highlighted the results of the Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstrations, with Sikorsky-Boeing, Bell, AVX and Karem outbriefing the results of their demonstration efforts and their proposed FVL approaches.

The final day focused on the Challenges and Progress of eVTOL. The first session, moderated by Ken Swartz (Aeromedia), highlighted the needs for community engagement (Community Air Mobility Initiative), investment in infrastructure (NEXA Capital) and a summary of the National Academy of Engineering report on “Advancing Aerial Mobility” by the study chair, Nick Lappos (Sikorsky). The second session featured progress updates from eVTOL developments from VFS members, VerdeGo, Lilium, BETA Technologies and Hyundai.

More information on the speakers and topics, and links to purchase the videos and slides, are posted at www.vtol.org/pre-forum.

Past and Future Webinars

VFS will be continuing the virtual programming throughout the year, including webinars hosted by various VFS chapters around the world. More information is available at www.vtol.org/webinars. Video recordings of all VFS webinars and hundreds of other presentations can be accessed via the VFS Video Library: www.vtol.org/videos.