Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Rex Alexander: And that is a huge challenge. Every fire inspector and fire marshal I've talked to is not too keen on lithium ion batteries on top of their buildings.
[00:00:10] Intro: Welcome to Hangar X Studios, where former. Fighter pilot and host John Ramstead takes Us on a journey across aerospace as it enters an historic period of innovation and transformation.Our guests include aviation experts, pilots, financiers, military leaders, and innovators of all types. Buckle up for another episode of Hangar X.
[00:00:40] John Ramstead: All right, welcome to the Hangar X podcast, where we explore aviation innovation and everything VTOL and a lot of the advancements right now that are affecting all of us. And today we have Rex Alexander on. Rex, welcome to the podcast.
[00:00:53] Rex Alexander: Thank you so much. I greatly appreciate you guys inviting me on.
[00:00:56] John Ramstead: Well, so great to have you here. Four decades of military aviation, commercial aviation, and you sent us some incredible pictures of you doing some testing in a Russian helicopter. I want to hear more about that. That looks like some really incredible equipment. And now, as we're actually moving into this world of EVTOs and VTOLs, infrastructure is a huge topic of conversation. And if you are having that conversation, I'll guarantee you, if it comes up, the name Rex Alexander is front of mine. Because, Rex, you are probably one of the foremost experts in this space. I was actually gonna read your bio because you're part of helicopter safety team, Vertical Aviation Safety Team technology working group. And I mean, on and on, you're probably about. You're part of basically any organization, private, public, that's doing work in this area. You're a leader and a voice in that group, and we can go through some of that. But I'd love, before we get into the infrastructure piece, share a little bit about just your background in aviation and as a pilot and some of the great stories you were kind of referring to before.
[00:02:06] Rex Alexander: No, I appreciate that. Always had a passion for aviation. I always tell people, I said I took my first flight when I was 3 years old with my father and was hooked ever since. It was one of those discovery flights at the local airport. You paid a penny a pound. I was a whole lot cheaper to fly then than I am now. But after that, I started taking lessons when I was 14 and then went to colle. Got my degree in aerospace or aeronautics in aviation maintenance and management at Parks College, St. Louis University.
Wound up working at McDonnell Douglas on F15s and 18s and the Harrier jump jet for a little while. Buddy of mine went to the army recruiter and drug me along with him. And the next thing you know, I'm putting my right Hand up and joining the army because they offered me a flight slot.
So I wound up in the army and became a pilot, Aero scout pilot and aero Scout instructor pilot. And then later in the Guard it was a standard instructor as well.
[00:03:06] John Ramstead: What, what helicopters did you fly?
[00:03:09] Rex Alexander: I was old, old school and I'm old. So. Oh 58 Alpha Charlie's before the oh 58 Deltas came out with the balls on top, we always said we did more with less than anybody else on the battlefield because we were doing using radio as one of our 50,000th maps and compasses before all those electronics came out.
So my job in the world as an Aero Scout pilot was to go find the bad guys at night under night vision goggles while flying through the trees and then blow them up. And we were really good at our job. Now I never saw combat, but a lot of my friends who I worked with and trained did so. But for whatever reason, all mine was peacetime.
[00:03:52] John Ramstead: And then when you got out, you got into commercial aviation also.
[00:03:55] Rex Alexander: I got out of the army, came back to the US I had two jobs lined up in the Gulf of Mexico back in about 1991 and the oil industry tanked and both jobs evaporated into thin air and so did every other job on the block. So I wound up luckily within five days of coming back to Indiana. I joined the Indiana National Guard because I was an instructor pilot and they needed one. So that was great that I could continue to fly and work in that space. And I took a job local. I was, I worked for a friend in the Guard building. Building signs, we, we did neon signs, electric signs. I was as an A and P mechanic. I knew how to weld and do all kinds of things that he, he found very helpful. So that held me over until I wound up getting a job in the offshore oil industry about a year later. I worked out of out of Galveston in the Gulf of Mexico for about a year and do again due to the relationships through the National Guard. One of my friends there had put me onto a job that opened up in Indianapolis where I lived for flying ems. So I'd interviewed and took a job as a helicopter air ambulance pilot in. I interviewed in, what was it, 2-91-91, took the job. I want to say it was probably July of 91.
[00:05:15] John Ramstead: So Rex, I've been the beneficiary of a life saving life flight terrible accident. I was in the hospital for two years.
[00:05:22] Rex Alexander: Oof.
[00:05:24] John Ramstead: But just quickly, when you're flying into an unknown situation, unknown landing field, right. You know that your time in getting the patient loaded and getting back quickly. What are some of the things that are just your, that you're going through your mind as a pilot in that environment?
[00:05:39] Rex Alexander: Yeah, I hate to say it, but I have this degree of doubt in that everybody is trying to kill me. And with that everything is always being double checked no matter what anyone says. So when you're coming into the scene, you're always double checking the weather, where are the winds at? Who are you working with? Where's the other traffic at? Once you get to the scene, you're looking at the landing environment. You're always looking for wires because there's always wires. That's just a given with the. We always said that there's no such thing as no wires. Then you're looking for where the accident's at. Then you're looking to see, okay, what kind of accident are we dealing with? Is there hazardous materials involved? Is introducing the aircraft going to cause harm or danger to anybody on the ground? Do I need to step the landing zone off a couple hundred feet? Or if you know, hazmat situation, I may have to step it off a quarter of a mile or more depending on what it is.
So in that space we're always looking for the what if that can kill you. And once you're on the ground, you're always head on a swivel. I had my helicopter attacked by a bull one time. That was interesting. Luckily the first responders were able to get it away from the aircraft before it, you know, put horns into it.
[00:06:54] John Ramstead: I think the bull would have won.
[00:06:56] Rex Alexander: I think the bull would have won. I landed on a rattlesnake once, got out, found that like really close and you know, I've landed on highways at 2 in the morning and people don't pay attention to first responders and drive right around them and underneath your turning ro.
Yeah, it can get exciting. And then, you know, like today it's here In Indiana, it's 5 degrees. So you go out at 2:00 in the morning, it's, you know, negative. And you, you don't know what you're going to go after. You might be on the scene for seven minutes. You might be on the scene for.
I think the longest I've ever been on scene was five hours.
That was a trench cave in and it was cold and we were there for a long, long time. So you have to dress for that. So you got to be prepared for anything. And then you show up and you're like, well yeah, we're going to have to go by ground, the patient's beyond our capability of moving, either because of their stature or because of their.
They're so compromised. Or in some cases we've had to move them by ground because they got stuff sticking out of them we can't put in the aircraft or hazardous materials. Also, you can't decompose, decon them enough to put them in the aircraft fast enough to meet the need of the medical situation. So there's. Yeah, it's constant.
[00:08:19] John Ramstead: You know, that's interesting because, you know, as a pilot myself, right. Those challenging environments are fun. You're always challenging yourself.
And now I'm just curious though, all that flying, instructing, flying out to rigs, flying ems, but then this transition to infrastructure where now you've become a world expert, there's a passion there, you've developed leadership. What led into that transition to what you're doing now?
[00:08:45] Rex Alexander: So I got out of military and offshore work and there was a standard most people followed to some degree. I got into the aeromedical industry and I was like, after six weeks wondering why all the architects and engineers are out to kill all the helicopter pilots. And it was most people in that world, great people, they just didn't know what they didn't know. And they're eyeing this piece of property as a two dimensional piece of concrete. Not thinking about the airspace, not thinking about power lines. People love to plant trees around heliports. One thing about trees, they grow. And the next thing you know, you have 50 foot obstacle surrounding your heliport.
I landed at places that I was like, where did you get those lights? Oh, they're pool lights. I said, you do know that there's a criteria for that, right?
It's like you'd land and be blinded by this stuff and you're like, okay, I think we can do better. I've seen every kind of marking at a heliport known to man. And in the beginning, few were right. So I started working with hospitals just to educate them on what it was supposed to look like. Next thing you know, my name kind of got passed around to other hospitals and I started charging. It was a part time gig and the part time gig I did for quite a while. And then it turned into almost a full time gig. I started my own company. Oh Lord. That was probably about 98, 99. Then I went into partnership with a good friend of mine, Ray Sims, and we formed Heli Experts International.
And shortly thereafter I quit my day job and we were working the partnership full time. And after that, one of our clients wound up being Uber elevate.
I'd met Mark Moore, who was from NASA at the time, helped write the white paper for Uber and asked us to help with the infrastructure. And about a year later, they. Next thing I knew, they hired me and I was internal. I was an Uber employee then for the next year I worked for them and then started this company. And yeah, been doing traditional heliports all that time, but Now I'd say 50% of our work is in vertiports and advanced air mobility and the R and D for that.
[00:11:00] John Ramstead: Yeah, I know your company, 5 Alpha. You're also a consultant advisor at a vertical flight society. We just had them on the podcast. And I mean, your expertise is so needed right now. There's a lot of questions I have, but first of all, as the FAA is coming out with more sfars on powered lift specifically, and we're looking at a whole new capability with EVTOLs, with the VTOL we're building and things like that, what is the regulatory environment currently and what does it really need to be to be able to allow the development of vertiports and really a whole new air traffic control system that's beneath the commercial part, you know, 35, 121 today.
[00:11:49] Rex Alexander: All right, that's a lot to unpack. I'll start with the regulations. Regulations and guidance in the United States first. So the FAA has been doing a really good job. I've been working with them quite a bit since they started this. Mike Hirschberg, who is the former executive director for Vertical Flight Society, the one that brought me on to be the.
[00:12:10] John Ramstead: Advisor we just interviewed. So he'll be coming out soon.
[00:12:15] Rex Alexander: So Mike and I actually met with the FAA back in 2019 talking about infrastructure and advanced air mobility and kicked it off then and been working with airports division in the FAA ever since then, helping to develop what this vertiport standard is. Been working with all the different players in industry to put comments together to provide feedback to the FAA and been pretty fortunate. They've paid attention to most everything we've, you know, discussed. And there's a big shift in there, which I'm happy to see is I got asked all the time what the question was, what's the difference between a heliport and a vertiport? And I would say I said one spell with an H, one spell with a V. I said, you know, in. In the grand scheme of things, it's all about the geometry that fits the airc space that provides the forgiveness necessary to do operations Any given day, under all circumstances beyond that, pretty much the same. So I was really happy to see that in the Last engineering brief 105 Alpha that was just published the end of last year, that they now said that vertiports are a classification of heliport. So it will take engineering brief 105 once it's been updated the last time, and they will then incorporate that into the advisory circular for heliports 150-539-02 Delta. So we'll see two echo probably the end of this year.
[00:13:43] John Ramstead: How do you see those evolving over the next year or two?
[00:13:47] Rex Alexander: It will be interesting. I think there's a player that we're trying to see how things move in that space and that's icao, the International Civil Aviation Organization. They're having ongoing meetings. They have a working group for vertical flight and vertical flight infrastructure. And I see the FAA really having a positive influence on those discussions. But right as, as of right now, ICAO doesn't have anything published for powered lift infrastructure other than their Annex 14, Volume 2 on Heliports.
Yasa had come out with some guidance.
A lot of that was copy and paste from ICAO's heliport documents.
I'm not a big fan of some of the airspace that they propose because I, in my opinion, purely my opinion doesn't provide the forgiveness necessary for infrastructure. So we always say that pilots don't always have good days, aircraft don't always have good days, you don't always have a good weather day. Some days all three are against you. And you need to build a certain amount of forgiveness into your infrastructure. So when that happens, you have options built into the system.
[00:15:00] John Ramstead: What's the forgiveness that you're talking about?
[00:15:03] Rex Alexander: So when I look at the infrastructure and the way we design heliports today, we're looking for clear approach, departure pass. We're looking to make sure that we're not putting the aircraft in a situation that's requiring a significant amount of power.
So we're using as much efficiency as we can at a slight approach departure angle. So when we design airspace for heliport, it's an 8 to 1 ratio. So for every 8ft you go horizontal, you come up 1ft, which is 7.125. So a standard approach for a helicopter is 8 to 10 degrees. Steep approach we look at is 1212 to 15.
I looked at what Yasa came up with and it's basically a vertical descent once you get to the pad.
And in that vertical descent, you really don't have the capability to Fly away as easily as you do in a normal approach with the airspace. You really need to have that escape route when things go south. And I've had to use those escape routes on occasion due to winds and turbulence in downtown areas. I've had Mother Nature kick me in the butt several times. And luckily the heliport was such that I could get out of it without bending a skid.
[00:16:17] John Ramstead: So if I'm understanding you right, you want to design it so when I'm coming in on a normal approach, I have enough as much forward velocity as I can safely have before I have to come in in that final flare versus having to come in hover and lower down in.
[00:16:30] Rex Alexander: There's a lot of things going on there that I look at. It's like we always have that discussion. It's like, yeah, you can do vertical, but why would you want to?
I said the efficiency factor is terrible. I said, you're burning 10 times more energy in the vertical than you are in the horizontal. So if you can maintain an airspeed that allows you to fly as efficient as possible, what's that do? Well, that extends your range. That also increases the capacity for you to carry another passenger or a couple more baggage.
We don't teach pilots vertical operations in the civilian market. We do in the helicopter industry and in the military because we do out of ground effect hover for checking before we go nap of the earth. That's not a procedure right now in the civilian market. And you can't see where you're going if you're going straight down.
I don't know yet what the visibility looks like out of the cockpits of these aircraft, but I have a feeling it may be a little bit more restrictive than that of a helicopter. So that's going to be those things we take into account. And then the other factor is those people in the back we call passengers. We look at the trajectories for these aircraft and I always say, if you're going to give somebody a limo ride, you're advertising a limo ride, but you delivered a carnival ride they may not want to get back on. So when we look at the trajectory, we're looking for a nice smooth approach, a nice smooth departure, not a lot of interruptions and turbulence. And there's a lot of good data in the aviation world that speaks to horizontal G loading on people and what their tolerance is in aviation, there's not a lot of good information on vertical. So the one group that I looked at that has a lot of fantastic information on what the G Loading tolerance is on a person is the elevator industry. And they all say they don't care how fast they go, but they do care how fast you accelerate them to that point or decelerate them from that point. So it's interesting. You can't just snap your fingers and be there. It's not something people in the back are going to put up with, I don't think. And you don't want to vomit.
[00:18:38] John Ramstead: Comet, you know, that's interesting. If you have to come in hard and fast or come in, stop, hover, it's going to be a completely. I never thought about that. The experience for the passengers.
[00:18:50] Rex Alexander: Well, the other one that we talk to a lot of times is we say, oh, everybody's about EVTOLs being quieter than a helicopter. So one thing the helicopter's got going for it based on its normal approach, is the noise that it does create is transitory. It comes, it's there it goes. If you're hovering down and you have to go a certain rate because you are susceptible in an EVTOL to vortex ring state. So you can't go too fast. So that means you have to, you know, go at a certain rate.
[00:19:19] John Ramstead: What's vortex ring state? Rex, help me.
[00:19:22] Rex Alexander: No, in a helicopter, if you think about it, the aircraft is turning a rotor that is basically cutting a slice of air every time it turns. And that slice of air then becomes downwash, and that downwash comes off the rotor in flight, that downwash becomes awake, also like wake turbulence in an airliner, but it's awake. But once you go below what we refer to as effective transitional lift, or EV or eto. Effective etl. God, I can't remember all this acronyms we use. So you go below effective translational lift, which is roughly somewhere between 17 and 20 knots, all of a sudden, that wake becomes downwash.
Well, if you go too slow and.
[00:20:09] John Ramstead: You'Re descending into the downwash, you start.
[00:20:11] Rex Alexander: To descend into that downwash. The helicopters have a tendency to take that and recirculate that downwash. So if this is the tip of your rotor blade, downwash comes down, comes out and gets recirculated.
[00:20:25] John Ramstead: And I'm guessing you're losing lift when.
[00:20:27] Rex Alexander: That happens, that starts to migrate inboard towards the center of the aircraft. So it's actually stalling that tip. What happens when you. We teach new pilots settling with power, we take them out at altitude. And you need three things. You need near zero to near zero airspeed, you need power applied and a descent rate.
And once you get into it, if you start to pull up on the collective. The one thing that you don't want to do is because it exacerbates it, it actually accelerates that situation.
The rule of thumb is directional flight. Get out of it. So you're in clean air and you're not getting that recirculation.
If you type in vortex ring Satan drone into YouTube, you'll find a lot of people who have experienced it didn't know what it was until after happened, because what they did was the cardinal sin. They added power to get out of it, and all they did was accelerate into the ground faster. So given the altitudes we're talking about and coming straight down, if we do it too fast, this aircraft being susceptible to vortex rain state, could get into a situation that if the pilot reacted improperly, one, add power, he could exacerbate the situation and get a vertical descent rate that he couldn't recover from. And two, based on the design of this airspace, they don't have a whole lot of room to maneuver.
[00:21:50] John Ramstead: I remember when they taught us the concept when I was a Navy pilot landing on carriers. But you get behind the power curve.
[00:21:57] Rex Alexander: Exactly.
[00:21:57] John Ramstead: When you get slow enough and you have so much drag on that airplane, even at full power, you are not going to recover. You're going to head straight down into the back of the ship or the water.
Even in full afterburner, you can get to a point where it's uncontrollable. So you have to anticipate those. And what you're talking about is creating designs of vertiports and heliports so that that effect is minimized as much as possible, correct?
[00:22:24] Rex Alexander: Exactly. And the other piece of that puzzle is we take into account what the prevailing winds are at in that location. So we always want to make sure that the pilot or the aircraft is flying into the wind whenever possible.
[00:22:37] John Ramstead: Would that require, like a data study for a period of time? It could, right?
[00:22:42] Rex Alexander: Yeah, it could. There's a lot of data out there that you can pull from of current weather at AWAS and ASOS stations are all recorded. So I can go and pull that data and tell you what the prevailing winds are in a particular location. If there's no data to be had, if there's an airport nearby that, say, a small airport, look to see what direction the runways are lined up, because they're usually lining those up with prevailing winds. Look at other data sometimes. I did a big study in downtown Chicago, and they actually put weather recording systems in place and recorded the winds for two years before we Put the heliport in just so we knew exactly what the approach departure paths should look like. Yeah.
[00:23:28] John Ramstead: Well, this is fascinating. So in addition to those, what are some of the other challenges of rolling out either, you know, AAM or VTOL infrastructure?
[00:23:37] Rex Alexander: I think one of the big ones that you have to point to is the electrical grid and the electrical health.
Airports have electricity now. Whether they have the capacity that's available to support a charging system is the question.
And moving electricity on an airport isn't as easy as you would think because most of it has to be buried. And there are certain locations in an airport they really don't want you digging. So getting the electrical supply is huge. And then does the grid have the capacity and the excess capacity to support what you're looking for? Heliports? If you're looking to modify heliport, the average heliport doesn't have electrical power. If it does, it generally has 110v that run the lights. Not nearly enough to run a charging system. So then we look at.
[00:24:25] John Ramstead: Yeah, what is the voltage you need? Like, I have a Tesla, so I have a 220 volt circuit in my garage, but I go to a supercharger.
[00:24:32] Rex Alexander: Yep.
[00:24:32] John Ramstead: And it's literally 10 times faster than my 220 volt. So I don't even know what the voltage they're running at. But. Or the amperage is actually probably a better measure. But it is significant.
[00:24:45] Rex Alexander: No, it's. It's one of the things we. I've had some work when I work with Uber since then.
I work with a company called ChargePoint and asked that. I was like, how, what am I looking at here? So they work in the measurement of wattage. So we have kilowatts and megawatts. So we looked at. I said, well, how many watts do I need? I said, well, we're expecting our chargers to be somewhere between 500 and 600 kilowatts. Well, that's pretty significant. I said, so if I were to put five or let's say ten of those chargers in at a location that are 500 kilowatts, all of a sudden I have five megawatts of energy.
I said, that's a significant impact on any neighborhood, any grid.
So when we look at moving power, that's the big expensive part. So you say, hey, I want to put these chargers in. I got to get power here. So two studies that we looked at, or I've looked at specifically and talked to the people that did them, it's somewhere between 500,000 to a million dollars a mile to move that power.
Now, once you move the power, that's only one piece of the puzzle. You're probably going to have to put in a substation. And the only thing I found that people hate more than heliports is substations. It's a lot of people are very passionate about keeping those out of their backyard. But substations on average take about two years to go through the permitting process. And then once you're done with that and you start building, takes about another two years to build it.
Copy or factor in a challenge you have based on all the natural disasters we had around the world, specifically fires and hurricanes. As such, the demand for power grid equipment like the type that goes into these substations, they're on backorder 18 to 24 months.
So it's hard to go to an investor and say, hey, I'm going to put in a vertiport. It's going to be five years before we can open it because it's going to take that long to get the electricity there. So that's, I think, a big challenge. When we look at building Greenfield, even, even Brownfield, when you look at putting it this in Airport, one of the biggest things that you need to do is, okay, where's access and what's the capacity of that access?
And if I don't have it, how long is it going to take and what's that look like in the future? So I have a feeling that phase 1 may have one charger. Phase two, you may see three chargers at three years. And phase three at say five to 10 years, you may have more chargers.
[00:27:21] John Ramstead: You know, it's interesting, so just put this in context because I know, because I got a hybrid car now too also, and most of the charge point chargers are 100 kilowatts. So a 500 kilowatt charger is like five of those because you need that to charge an EVTOL in time to make it usable again.
[00:27:37] Rex Alexander: Right.
[00:27:37] John Ramstead: But I'm also thinking about this, right? A 50 watt bulb.
I need enough power to light up 10,050 watt bulbs. That's what 500 kilowatts is.
[00:27:48] Rex Alexander: Yep.
[00:27:48] John Ramstead: So think about the piping and the power and the amps that are flowing into just one charger. And then I want to be able to charge 4, 5, 6 evtols if I'm going to have a vertiport that actually is more than just single use.
[00:28:02] Rex Alexander: Well, and that's the thing.
[00:28:03] John Ramstead: Am I thinking about it accurately no.
[00:28:05] Rex Alexander: You'Re looking at it just right because you look at the business model. Business model is all about throughput. The faster you can turn people around, the more money you can actually make to point where you can break even and then make actual profit.
One of the big keys is being able to charge as many aircraft as possible as quickly as possible. So fast charging, however, comes with several challenges.
Power grid power availability is one.
Working to develop a battery that doesn't have susceptible damage to it because of fast charging. Dissipating the heat that's generated during fast charging, Being able to, you know, put a cable on an aircraft that is capable of delivering that level of power without being unsafe. Now we're talking significant amount of weight because of the copper. I think there was a documentary that Al Jazeera did on green energy as a.
I think it was a darker side of green. One of the comments in there that I looked at was a gentleman said that the amount of copper that the human race will need to mine over the next 30 years to support electric vehicles and advanced her mobility is equal to the amount of copper the human race has mined since it was a human race.
[00:29:32] John Ramstead: Wow.
[00:29:33] Rex Alexander: I was like, that's quite a bit.
[00:29:35] John Ramstead: Yeah, there's, there's not an alternative to copper that I'm aware of.
[00:29:39] Rex Alexander: If there is, it may not be as good. I know aluminum, you can get electricity through it, but it's not as good. It's not been proven to be as good, if you will, as copper in that space. I know the group that I've talked to a lot that has some really good things to say about the electrical grid, electrical capacities and things like that is nrel National Renewable Energy Laboratories out of Colorado. They publish some fantastic papers on electrification for airports. So if anybody has any questions, I point them in that direction.
[00:30:13] John Ramstead: Is our grid capable of this increased load?
[00:30:21] Rex Alexander: Yes and no. Some places probably, yes. Newer places, yeah. But just like you have a charger for a Tesla, you bought the fast charger. If you'd have went home and then discovered, oh wow, I've only got a 100amp breaker box, you would now be on the hook to put in a 220, 200amp breaker box.
[00:30:39] John Ramstead: Well, I actually did. I had to pay an electrician to come out. There you go, completely put in a whole new separate box and then run that separate line. We had to get permission through Xcel Energy and we had it, you know, but it was worth it because I could charge in my garage, but I mean, just at my house, that was a Pretty meaningful expense.
[00:30:58] Rex Alexander: Exactly. So there's a lot of homes that only have 100amp box. So if all of a sudden, say, seven or eight of your close neighbors decide to do the same thing and they experience the same problem, that infrastructure upstream is probably as old now, all of a sudden, the infrastructure upstream may not be able to support what you are now drawing as a community.
[00:31:23] John Ramstead: Is that why our power kept going out in the neighborhood? Now I figured it out. My neighbor got a Tesla too.
[00:31:29] Rex Alexander: There you go. But those are. Those are questions you have to look at. It is. It's one of the things is, can the. Can the grid support this added drain? One of the things. When I was working for Uber, they sent me down to Los Angeles to look at different locations. And while I was there, it was 110 in the shade. I was down there for about a week and a half looking at all the different locations. And they kept having brownouts because of the demand on the grid already. And that was one of the things I was thinking. So you came into the city in the morning when it was cool and there was no problem. Now you want to go home in the afternoon, it's really, really hot, and there's no power to recharge. How do we deal with that? And in talking with a lot of the people in the space, they said, well, what we can do is actually put on site battery systems in electric storage systems, or ess.
That is something you can charge at night when the demand is lower, and then when the demand is really, really high, this can augment your power system so that you can charge from it. Now, that's a big footprint.
[00:32:35] John Ramstead: But, well, they're also expensive and they're heavy and they're heavy. And I'm thinking about, you know, a lot of us. Like, I envision a lot of this being retrofitted onto rooftops, stadiums, buildings, maybe a hospital that wants to expand their capacity. But now we're talking about the cabling, the wiring, the copper, you know, powerwall, fire suppression systems. Because if you have a lithium battery fire on top of any of these buildings, that is no bueno. So what is the feasibility of these kind of vertiports off of ground level?
[00:33:09] Rex Alexander: And that is a huge challenge. Every fire inspector and fire marshal I've talked to is not too keen on lithium ion batteries on top of their buildings.
And I work very closely with the National Fire Protection Association. I said on the committee that Wright said fire standards for heliports. Now, we just did.
NFPA just did publish a new standard, that's heliports and vertiports. And we just kicked off the next iteration of the next revision this, this month, which is a three year process that will, you know, update that. But in looking at the fire standards, there are fire standards for electric vehicles.
855, NFPA. 855 is the electric storage system. There's also one for even hydrogen. So NFPA2 is a hydrogen standard. Then you look at the electrical code NFPA 70.
You also have healthcare has NFPA 99, we have 418. There's 407 and 409. So you have hangers and charger fuel systems. So there's a lot of guidance out there. And the one that just did change quite a bit and has updated is for parking garages. I want to say that's NFPA.
I'll get it wrong. I want to say it's 82. I can't remember specifically, but they've been having a lot of issues in certain parts of the world with EVs and parking garages.
And if you look at what's on the Internet, what's one of the areas everybody's looking to put a Verta ports on top of Parking garage.
[00:34:45] John Ramstead: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
[00:34:47] Rex Alexander: Yeah. No, I agree.
[00:34:48] John Ramstead: Centrally located, you know, people are already, you know, commuting in and out of there. There's a big open, flat roof.
[00:34:54] Rex Alexander: Yeah.
[00:34:54] John Ramstead: It could support the weight. I'm guessing there's a key difference that.
[00:34:59] Rex Alexander: You have to pay attention to. It's not impossible. So when we look at a parking garage, you have to take into account two things. For the aircraft, they only really take into account one thing for cars, and that's the load factor. So for a car, you're taking the static load. For an aircraft, you take in the static load. But you also have to take into account dynamic load. The way the FAA and the architect design guides speak to that is you take whatever the max takeoff weight is, multiply it by 1.5 or 150%. So if you had a 10,000 pound aircraft, the dynamic load would be £15,000. So one of the things you have to look at when you're working on a parking garage is the International Code Council specifically says it's rated at 40 psf. Heliports for helicopters above £3,000 must be rated at 60 psf.
[00:35:51] John Ramstead: So you have what is psf pounds per square foot? Right. And that's one of my construction standards. So I might not have met the construction Standard, so it might even be an option for me.
[00:36:00] Rex Alexander: So you can either one, put, yeah, retrofit, put something down on top of that to disperses the load. So augment that by putting in a different layer that spreads that load out properly. Get some construction engine or as you said, build an additional level. Now, most parking garages are designed and overbuilt. A lot of them are designed for multiple stories that they never use. And I found when I was in la, the average person doesn't park on the top because of the sun.
[00:36:30] John Ramstead: Right?
[00:36:31] Rex Alexander: So if you put another level, all of a sudden now you've got more people parking in the parking garage. So it's a win, win.
[00:36:37] John Ramstead: Now, something that the FAA came out recently with their concerns for heliport design is downwash and outwash. And it kind of relates back to our conversation recently about just getting stuck in your own downwash. But some of these could be more significant than helicopters. But you're the expert, so I've been wanting to ask you your, your thoughts on this and how this could impact vertiport design. Because the average helicopter standard is what, 50 by 50ft?
[00:37:06] Rex Alexander: It depends on the size of the aircraft. I would say the design helicopter dictates the size of the heliport. So if it's a small helicopter, it's going to be a smaller. If it's a large heavy helicopter, the heliport is going to be bigger. Now, having done the research and looked at all the heliports in the United States, I've, I went through and did the data mining of the 60, 61 plus hundred heliports that are on record.
I can tell you right now the data is terrible and we don't know exactly how big the helicopter heliports are because it's incorrect.
That said, the majority of the heliports in the United States happen to be at hospitals.
The heliport design advisory circular the FAA publishes says that the smallest heliport for a hospital is 40ft by 40ft. So all the hospitals in essence put in 40 by 40 pads in a lot of cases. So the average size is probably 40 by 40 or less.
I put in several heliports that support larger helicopters, even up to the S92, which is the new presidential helicopter. That then requires basically a 60 foot by 60 foot touchdown and liftoff area surrounded by a final approach and takeoff area that's about, you know, 102ft. I think the safety area is 145ft.
Now, when the FAA looked at vertic EVTOls versus helicopters. They also looked at the accuracy of the aircraft in landing and taking off. And I think that's why, if you look at the engineering brief 105, they're still using a slightly larger TELOF than what we use for heliports and slightly larger FADO than we use for heliports.
[00:38:59] John Ramstead: What's telof and fado? Rex?
[00:39:02] Rex Alexander: Sorry about that. My life acronyms. So TILOF is touchdown lift off area. That's the physical structure the aircraft is touching down and landing on. That could be concrete, that could be aluminum, that could even be grass.
[00:39:13] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:39:14] Rex Alexander: FADO final approach and takeoff area is the maneuver area. That's the area that you want to keep clear of a position obstructions. The other term that I'm guessing that's.
[00:39:23] John Ramstead: Circular around maybe the center of the heliport correctly.
[00:39:27] Rex Alexander: Well, the maneuver, it's if your telof is square, your FADO should be square. If your tee loft is round, your FADO should be round. So the two should mimic the shape.
[00:39:37] John Ramstead: Okay.
[00:39:38] Rex Alexander: But the other term that is used is out of the code of federal regulations. When you talk about airspace, they use a term called imaginary surface. So you have the transitional surface, you have the approach surface, and then you have what they call the primary surface. The primary surface of the FADO are two totally different things that occupy the exact same space, but it's a regulation, whereas TELOF is defined and only defined in an advisory circular. And then outside of that fado, you have what we call the safety area. That's our fudge factor. So if the pilot finds himself outside of this fado, he's got a safe environment.
So if he has an engine failure, has tail rotor effectiveness issues, or has tail rotor failure, or really bad windy, gusty day, and he's not able to keep it inside the fado, he's not going to run into something right outside the fado. And that's one of the issues we see in a lot of the illustrations that people are putting out online for Vertiports is no one's taken into account all those imaginary surfaces for safety.
[00:40:42] John Ramstead: They're just drawing the square 40 by 40 foot box and going, we can put that right there. Or 50 by 50. Right. Because you don't think about these other things when you're maybe an architecture major or even myself going, hey, we could. You could put a pad there.
[00:40:56] Rex Alexander: No, there's a lot of. There's a really cool animations and artist renditions of Vertiports on the Internet that I wouldn't give you a plug nickel for.
[00:41:06] John Ramstead: You know, it's interesting too, you know, anybody designing an aircraft, if you want to use it for the EMS mission, you have to take into account a majority of our customers in that world. We have to be able to land on a 40 by 40 foot pad or require customers to retrofit, which is going to be expensive. So these are design serious design considerations for manufacturers.
[00:41:28] Rex Alexander: Yeah, and that's a good question because we look at all the hospital heliports in the United States and I would say a large, large majority of those are 40 by 40. Now if it's a ground based pad, you know, retrofitting that and expanding it to what we need for an evtol is probably not going to be too terrible.
[00:41:45] John Ramstead: Like if it's in the backyard of the hospital versus the roof.
[00:41:48] Rex Alexander: Right, exactly. But if it's a concrete pad on a roof and it's only 40 by 40. Yeah. The expense to do that's going to be significant. So that may be one of the hindrances down the road because of the size of the aircraft. And I think one of the things that is another stumbling block for everybody is the fact that in the helicopter world the touchdown liftoff area is the load bearing surface. The Fato, the final approach and take Air Force, it can be load bearing, but it doesn't have to be. You look at the engineering brief, the FAA said, well, the Fato, the final pro, has to be load bearing that increases your surface area significantly. So if you had a 50 foot controlling dimension for the aircraft, now you're talking a 100 foot by 100 foot load bearing capable structure. And if you look at all the hospitals, then you're lucky to have a 40 by 40 right now. And you probably don't have the real estate for that 100 by 100. So that in itself is going to be a challenge now.
[00:42:51] John Ramstead: So let's kind of switch gears. I want to ask you a couple questions here before we wrap up.
[00:42:55] Rex Alexander: Sure.
[00:42:57] John Ramstead: I was thinking about VFR versus IFR operations. We were talking about a little of this before we even got started is how does the VFR requirement today affect infrastructure and what is going to have to happen to allow IFR operations?
[00:43:15] Rex Alexander: I don't think there's going to be any restrictions on the VFR piece. We, we've done that for a long, long time. We know what that looks like. We know what the weather we need to accomplish that.
The IFR is going to be a little bit more of a challenge in that we just did with the release of the latest advisory circular, which is 2Delta in 2023.
Actually put some documentation in print that speaks to what that might require. Because up until that point we didn't have a minimum criteria for what survey data needed to look like. Now we do, but to be able to depends on what kind of IFR operations you want. So today we're doing point in space approaches, pins approaches to heliports.
Now that doesn't mean we have any IFR heliports. We have VFR heliports with IFR procedures that attached to them. And you have two different types. Basically have proceed vfr. So you break out and you go to the air the heliport under VFR conditions or you have LPV proceed visually. Meaning you have to have.
[00:44:25] John Ramstead: Define lpv, would you, Rex?
[00:44:28] Rex Alexander: Don't ask me to do that one. It's.
[00:44:30] John Ramstead: I know I find LPV approaches and I don't know it either, but. Okay, so press on.
[00:44:34] Rex Alexander: So the key there is proceed visual, right?
[00:44:37] John Ramstead: Yep.
[00:44:38] Rex Alexander: You have to be able to see the landing environment. Some portion of that. You have to be able physical or you have to do the missed approach. Now, the average pins approaches that are out there today are going to get you down to a height of somewhere around 250ft, plus or minus, depending on other factors. An ILS at an airport is going to get you to about 200ft. It's not until you get into, you know, really big, your iron. Do you see cat 1, 2 and 3 where you can get down to the actual Runway.
[00:45:08] John Ramstead: Yep.
[00:45:09] Rex Alexander: Now to do that, it is possible. The problem is finding somebody willing to spend that kind of money because. And also having the footprint necessary to support it. Because now you have to have a certain type of lighting which takes up a huge amount of real estate and you need a certain type of equipment to be able to pull that off.
I don't know. It's like we could. We could do IFR point in space approaches without too much of a challenge. We have that technology today. We can move that. But if you want to get lower, you want to do actual full touchdowns to a heliport, who's going to pay for that and what's the return on your investment? That's a challenge.
[00:45:52] John Ramstead: You know, I hadn't thought about that. You know, for an instrument approach into an airport, all the lighting systems that are just so commonplace. But now you're talking about anything past vfr, you're going to need those kind of lighting systems incorporated into the vertiports into the helipads. If you want to do any kind of IFR operations, which for some instance is a requirement and something you mentioned, like in LA, 25% of the days are IFR because of smog, fog, smoke clouds. But think about that. You have a one in. If you're not flying ifr, you have a one in four chance of getting canceled. If you're using a VFR only service.
[00:46:26] Rex Alexander: There is that potential. Yep.
[00:46:29] John Ramstead: That's. Anything else, you know, as this rolls out, I mean, there's going to be a lot of things around the community. Regulations, technology we talked about earlier, gaps in just weather reporting. I mean, there's a lot of issues.
Is there anything else that you're seeing right now? Maybe as we wrap up, just final thoughts on what are the biggest priorities that you have, all the committees you have visibility to, to really focus on over just the next year. In particular, I think one of the.
[00:47:05] Rex Alexander: Key elements that I've been pushing for the last couple of years in this space is harmonization.
And when I say harmonization, harmonization of regulations, not only in the faa, so there's several different parts within the code of federal regulations that we need to make sure say the same thing. And we can't, you know, point to all the different regulations and find that today. So there needs to be harmonization internally, but there also needs to be harmonization amongst fire code, building code regulations. And then we take that aviation world and turn it into the planning and zoning at the local municipality side. And you almost need a Rosetta Stone when you get aviators and zoning and planning people together because they don't speak the same language. And working in that environment for 30 years, it's interesting when clients run afoul of something, it's usually the planning and zoning. And part of that is education. So I.
[00:48:02] John Ramstead: Well, that can put a rapid stop to anything.
[00:48:05] Rex Alexander: Well, yeah.
[00:48:05] John Ramstead: And you don't want to get sideways with those committees either.
[00:48:08] Rex Alexander: No, I've had several clients do that. If you're going to put a heliport in, there's three levels in the U.S. there's federal, state and local. Local is the hardest. Federal is the easiest. Here's your checklist. Follow it, file your paperwork. State's usually a little bit harder, but not terrible. Here's your checklist. Oh, by the way, we have these additional require.
Call us, we'll help you. But the local level, that's the challenge because a lot of times you have to go in front of planning and zoning meetings and hearings where all your friends and neighbors get to attend and sharpshoot you for trying to put a heliport in the backyard. I always tell clients, I said, don't let them find out about your project in the news. Go talk to them one on one. Explain it to what you want to do, why you want to do it, and help educate them. Same with planning and zoning commissions as well as city councils.
A lot of these people don't get education in aviation. They don't know what a te lof and a fato and a safety area are. They may have an ordinance on the books. They may not have an ordinance on the books.
[00:49:12] John Ramstead: Well, and they're also afraid of the community getting the wrong idea. And everybody now complaining that this is going to ruin my neighborhood because of noise.
[00:49:19] Rex Alexander: Exactly.
[00:49:19] John Ramstead: Or I don't want somebody crashing in my pool.
[00:49:22] Rex Alexander: Exactly. Safety and noise are the two killers of heliports today.
And to say that EVTOLs are silent is a lie. They do make noise. How much noise, we don't know. And the other side of that coin is what kind of noise. So we measure noise using a decibel rating with a day night level, and it may meet that because it's quieter. However, what's the frequency tone in the tenor? It may be like nails on a chalkboard to some people. Australia had that. You go to YouTube, type in Australia, drone and noisy neighbor.
And there's one neighbor who says, hey, this is great. I can order a cup of coffee or hamburger anytime I want. The other neighbor's like, oh, this is terrible. He's ordering hamburgers every freaking five minutes. And it's like a herd of bees going by my house every 10 minutes. Depends on who you are. So that's one of those things we look at when we talk about noise is what's it sound like? And that was, I think, Amazon. I heard stories of. They ran into that problem with their design because the rotors were small, high frequency. And it just irritated the heck out of everybody, though it met the level. So that's an issue that we need to grapple with is what are the metrics we need for measuring the noise. And that's going to take some research and development in that space.
There's a lottery. So whether it's another one we talked about early on, that's one that we need a lot more research and we need some more dollars in. And I was very happy to see ASTM International get some documentation put together on what third party systems are going to look like, because policy has always been based on technology in the 1950s policy was written in the 70s, so we need to fix the policy to match technology. That's always been the challenge in this space. Technology is always outpacing policy. So working on Capitol Hill, I can tell you that's also a big challenge and getting the right players in giving the right education. And that's one of the things I know Mike Hirschberg and now Angelo Collins and myself have been on Capitol Hill trying to provide our congressmen, senators and everybody else up there the right information, the correct information to make better decisions.
[00:51:39] John Ramstead: Yeah, well, that's important work. So as we wrap up Rex, this has been fascinating conversation. What just final thoughts. Do you have to leave with everybody as they've been listening in?
[00:51:49] Rex Alexander: No, it's one of those situations that's changing daily. I said the good thing. Like I said, in the vertiport standards world there is a standard. NFPA 14 is published. You can go read that for free online.
The advisory circular the helicopter world uses for heliports is online. It's a free download.
Now that vertiports are going to be a class of heliports, I would highly recommend you go look and see what's in that heliport design advisory circuit because that's going to be a lot of the same thing that we use for vertiports.
There's a lot of good stuff coming out of NASA right now for educational materials. So look for that as well. There's several different groups that meet. I'm involved in the infrastructure group that meets on a regular basis and you know, we, we look at all the different opportunities for the research side.
Vertical Flight Society has put on several workshops that I've helped spearhead for infrastructure over the last five years.
The other group, vai, Vertical Aviation International. Now there used to be helicopter association heavily involved in the advanced air mobility world. So is Gamma General Aircraft Manufacturers association, even naceo, the national association of State Aviation Officers has an advanced air mobility group. So everybody's pulling in the same direction. We just need to all get together and make sure that we're all singing off the same hymnal when we do so.
[00:53:20] John Ramstead: Yeah. Well, this has been great. I really appreciate you going into the detail you did. You're such an expert. I know we're going to want to have you back on Rex. So let's reserve that down the road as we as more. I think as we solve some more problems and maybe source even some more questions. Every time you solve a problem, then you got the next one to solve. So love to have you on. So, man, great getting to know you Keep knocking them alive out there. I look forward to our next conversation now.
[00:53:48] Rex Alexander: Thank you for having me. Greatly appreciate it. And I look forward to the next meeting.
[00:53:51] John Ramstead: Me too.
