267 – The Quantum Tron UAV

10/22/17 • 110 min

Quantum Systems designs, builds and sells unmanned air vehicles for professional use. Their particular specialty is VTOL designs, i.e., UAVs that take off and land vertically, but then switch to airplane mode for airplane-like speed and range. In this episode we chat with Quantum's CEO Florian Seibel about their primary drone, the Tron. We focus on the motivation for developing the aircraft, the use cases, as well as design decisions and technical aspects.

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266 – Secondary Surveillance Radar

Secondary surveillance radar (SSR) is the radar technology used in aviation to query transponders; it forms the backbone of today's air traffic control infrastructure. Our guest in this episode is Mike Sharples who has been part of the development of the technology and is intimately familiar with the details. We discuss the importance of SSR today, the details of the protocol, the difference between and evolution from Mode A/C to S as well as the relationship to ADS-B.

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268 – Tierökologie

Zur Abwechslung geht es wieder einmal um Tiere, genauer gesagt um die Ökologie von Tieren. Joanna Fietz von der Universität Hohenheim forscht auf diesem Gebiet und beschäftigt sich dabei insbesondere mit Bilchen, einer Tierfamilie, zu der auch der Siebenschläfer gehört. Im Gespräch geht es daher viel um die Eigenschaften und das Verhalten von Siebenschläfern. Der Winterschlaf gehört essentiell zur Anpassungsstrategie dieser Tiere und wird deshalb besonders beleuchtet.