Forbes, May 25, 2015 (II)

choi

(1) Joann Muller, The Flight of His Life. At a North Carolina airfield just 240 miles from aviation’s birthplace, a revolutionary Honda engineer named Michimasa Fujino is making his 29-year dream of a new kind of business jet a reality.
www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller ... -30-year-obsession/

Quote:

"Although very light jets (like the 10,000 9,200-or-so-pound HondaJet) are still lagging, sales are perking up. Last year 87 light jets (under 12,500 pounds) were delivered, up from 77 in 2013 but still way down from the 371 delivered in 2008. * * * Honda already has more than 100 orders. Successful newcomers are rare in the aviation industry, but Honda’s credibility in autos gives it a better chance than most.

its [HondaJet] most distinctive feature is the unusual location of the engines–on top of the wings. On most aircraft the engines are below the wings or attached to the rear of the fuselage. Without those structural constraints the HondaJet (which is about two and a half times the size of a minivan) can provide more room for passengers and their stuff. * * * With the engines out over the wings, it’s also quieter. * * * It’s also about 15% more fuel-efficient [than than any other jet in its class]. The top speed is 483mph, and the maximum cruise altitude is 43,000 feet–higher than most commercial airliners. Its range is 1,358 miles

My comment:
(a)
(i) The first (and only the first) of four Web pages is translated into Chiese: 追夢29年：藤野道格與他的HondaJet.
www.forbes-life.com/article/18973
(ii) Having seen Sukhoi Superjet 100, Bombardier CSeries, and Mitsubishi Regional Jet (MRJ) struggling, I am glad Taiwan killed a similar project decades ago.
(b) "Michimasa FUJINO 藤野 道格, chief executive of Honda Aircraft Co ホンダ・エアクラフト・カンパニー社長 * * * [headquartered] in Greensboro, NC * * * The launch of HondaJet, three decades in the making at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion to $2 billion * * * With a price tag of $4.5 million [a plane]"

Greensboro, North Carolina
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensboro,_North_Carolina
(third-largest city by population in North Carolina (280,000 in 2013); "named for Major General Nathanael Greene," who fought a battle there in 1781)
(c) "Earlier this year US regulators slapped Honda with a record $70 million fine for failing to report warranty claims and more than 1,700 incidents involving death or injury, as required under the government’s early-warning safety system. A few weeks later Honda said CEO Takanobu ITO 伊東 孝紳, 61, would step down in June after six years at the helm."
(d) "It’s hardly the traditional deflated-ego kenkyo 謙虚 of a ‘team-first’ Tokyo salaryman, but that’s Fujino. In an age where engineering is dominated by anonymous teams his HondaJet, with its long tapered nose and distinctive engine placement on top of the wings, is a personal statement, the aluminum and carbon-fiber embodiment of an extraordinary decades-long journey that led him from his birthplace in Japan to a Mississippi college town, back to the boardrooms of Japan and, finally, to the helm of this manufacturing plant in North Carolina, 240 miles–as the private jet flies–from Kitty Hawk, where the Wright brothers took flight in 1903."

Fujino’s highest education is “a University of Tokyo aeronautical engineering [bachelor’s] degree.”  Desirous of making planes, Honda sent a five-person team (including Fujino, at 26) to Mississippi State University (located at Starkville, MS).  But the University and the Honda team could not help or teach each other--because, in my view, neither knew much about aeronautics in practice. This experience is described in Web pages 2-3 in this article.

(e) "The cabin is 20% larger than comparable business jets * * * Passengers don’t have to play footsie the way they do in most small business jets; the facing seats are set farther apart"
(i) aircraft cabin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_cabin
(ii) footie (n; diminutive of foot; First Known Use 1944)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/footsie

(f) In Mississippi "Fujino faced culture shock. He couldn’t understand the locals’ drawl and longed for Japanese food in a three-stoplight backwater."

His hometown in Japan is said to be a backwater with three traffic lights only.
(g) “[Web page 2:] something looks off. Don’t two bulky engines sticking up from the wings kill the plane’s aerodynamics? That’s what most aviation experts learned in school, supported by a failed attempt in Germany years earlier. * * * [Web page 3:] He [Fujino] spotted a 1930s aeronautics textbook by Ludwig Prandtl, the German aeronautical engineer whose pioneering analysis built the foundation for modern aerodynamics. As he leafed through the dusty pages, he was reminded that in the early 20th century there were no computers for numerical simulation or computational fluid dynamics. Instead, Prandtl and his peers used complex theoretical functions–old-fashioned math–to analyze aerodynamic flow.

Ludwig Prandtl
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Prandtl
(1875 – 1953)

(h) "he [Fujino] arranged for the HondaJet to make its debut at AirVenture Oshkosh, a show put on by the Experimental Aircraft Association that draws 500,000 visitors a year from more than 60 countries to tiny Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh, Wis."
(i) EAA AirVenture Oshkosh
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EAA_AirVenture_Oshkosh
(ii) Oshkosh, Wisconsin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oshkosh,_Wisconsin
(The city "was named for Menominee Chief Oshkosh, whose name meant 'claw' ")