Aviation International News senior correspondent Ian Goold has been involved in aerospace since 1964 and in aviation media for more than 40 years. He enjoyed a 20-year career at Flight International magazine, where he was latterly air-transport editor before turning freelance in 1993. A winner of the European Regions Airline Association Hank McGonagle award for excellence in aerospace journalism and a Royal Aeronautical Society Aerospace Journalist of the Year global&nbsp;award, he has edited or contributed to aerospace and aviation magazines, special publications, and websites in Africa, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America. Ian entered aerospace as an apprentice at the British Aircraft Corporation at Brooklands (Weybridge), where he worked on production and final assembly lines of the Vickers Super VC10, and BAC One-Eleven , and manufacture of Concorde major sub-assemblies. He subsequently graduated from the BAC Design Training School to work in the airframe structures drawing office (including design of international future projects, such as the Panavia Tornado multi-role combat aircraft) before joining Flight International in 1973. Apart from years of reading aircraft magazines and books, his first direct contact with aviation media had come during the early 1970s when he was involved at Brooklands with the Weybridge Man-powered Aircraft Group, which designed and built the tenth aircraft to fly under purely human power. As an aviation journalist, he has worked at more than&nbsp; 50 of the major biennial&nbsp;global and regional international aerospace industry shows at Le Bourget, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai (having missed attending only one "Farnborough" since 1960), plus innumerable NBAA, HAI, (U.S.) AOPA, and EBACE Conventions and ERA Assemblies. His favourite aircraft is the Hawker Hunter, of which – as a schoolboy – he heard hundreds make their first flights from Dunsfold, where also on September 24, 2013, he saw the penultimate landing of the VC10 (happily involving an example of which he had witnessed the maiden takeoff in 1970) a day before the last example made the design's final flight (unless, of course....).

Senior correspondent

Ian Goold

U.S. equipment manufacturer Parker Aerospace (Hall 5 E21) is here at Le Bourget promoting its “core” flight-control, hydraulics, fuel and engine systems products in a “streamlined” exhibition stand. Parker is showing fuel-tank inerting systems, for which it has been working with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for the past four or five years, said technology and innovation group vice president Mark Czaja. Such systems are being fitted to new commercial aircraft, but have the potential for retrofit to existing fleets.
Parker Aerospace has developed onboard inert-gas generating equipment for all Airbus models, most Boeing current designs and others such as the Russian Sukhoi Superjet regional-jet project. The company’s basic design can be produced to match alternative configurations and fuel-tank volumes of different aircraft, said Czaja.
Parker is working to produce fuel cells that will address requirements driven by what Czaja terms “the mega trend of green” as the industry emphasizes its environmental credentials. He said fuel cells for aerospace now have been developed to the point where they can be offered as an alternative to established auxiliary-power units or ram-air turbine technology. The company is showing an industrial fuel cell aimed at the European market.
Another area of Parker Aerospace expertise being promoted is fly- and power-by-light (FBL and PBL) equipment in which electronic technology is used for, say, data processing by fiberoptic cable, including the use of light to power a computer. Czaja said PBL would permit greater amounts of data to be processed than is possible using copper wire for transmission, thus making greater bandwidth available. 
The technology results in lighter equipment that is less susceptible to interference from high-intensity radiation fields or lightning. Another plus is that safety is enhanced, since PBL systems can be passed through fuel tanks with less danger than is inherent with previous technology.
Parker has patented electromechanical systems technology that could be applied to primary flight controls for the next generation of commercial airliners, said Czaja. Previously used in such applications on unmanned aircraft and missiles, but only in secondary airliner systems, the technology is now being promoted by Parker to OEMs as having reached sufficient maturity for use on a “flying platform.” It also is showing fuel nozzles for more-efficient combustion in jet engines, and brushless direct-current rotor-drive pumps for modulating fuel flow to engines.
Czaja confirmed the continuing industry trend for suppliers to become more involved with OEMs in the development of new equipment and systems. For example, Parker Aerospace provides the whole hydraulic system for the Being 787, rather than simply the pumps. 
Czaja said there had been a step up in how new-aircraft development responsibility was shared across the industry, with suppliers working more closely with regulators and manufacturers. Parker also has been very involved with Brazilian manufacturer Embraer on flight-control, fuel and hydraulics systems on its E-170 and E-190 regional jets. 
Recent contracts include work from the U.S. Air Force research laboratory (AFRL) for the Parker Aerospace control-systems division (with General Electric and subcontractor Optelecom) covering components development and a plan for flight-control power management and distribution for the air-vehicle electromagnetic environmental effects immunity. The division also will support the AFRL’s silicon-carbide power-switch module programs.

Fuel-tank inerting among the stars of Parker’s show

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