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RAeS Air Transport Specialist Group and Royal Entomological Society

This event is free to attend – Click to go straight to tickets

Thank you to those who attended our ‘RADAR detection & threats to aircraft’ talk live.

We were able to successfully record this meeting and are please to be able to share this with you if you missed it, or just wanted to watch it again!

Event Synopsis:

This inaugural collaboration of the Royal Entomological Society and Royal Aeronautical Society will explore the various ways in which insects can adversely affect aircraft operations, such as through sludge accretion on wings and disturbance in the cockpit! It will also describe how RADAR can be used to detect insects at altitude and to understand their behaviour, which is relevant to finding solutions to the problems they cause. The audience will be canvassed on a future wider-ranging meeting, seeking to establish whether further RES and RAeS partnership might usefully provide information to help solve common practical issues.

About RAeS

As the world’s only professional body dedicated to the aerospace community, we exist to further the advancement of aeronautical art, science and engineering around the world.

Established in 1866, the Society has been at the forefront of developments in aerospace, seeking to promote the highest professional standards and provide a central forum for sharing knowledge.

RAeS’ event page

What areas will this event cover ?

• Examination of aircraft and insect operational interaction
• Examination of using RADAR to detect high altitude insects
• Test run for a further RAeS/RES event, expanded in size and scope

What benefits will delegates gain from attending?

• An understanding of insect impact on aircraft operational safety.
• An understanding of using RADAR to examine insect behaviour at high altitude .
• Opportunity to suggest topics for further RAeS and RES collaboration.

Talk outline:

• Intro to Talk and to RAeS – Sohail Chughtai (10 min)
• Intro to RES – Richard Harrington (10 min)
• Insect and Aircraft Operations – RAeS, Dai Whittingham (30 min)
• Detection of aircraft and insects, using RADAR – RES, Jason Chapman (30 min)
• Intro to Poll on further event topics
• Break (10min)
• Panel Discussion and Q + A (30 min)
• Closing remarks, Poll results and End (10 min)
  Total time – 2hrs 10 min

Organisers

Sohail Chughtai

Air Transport Specialist Group Vice-Chair
Royal Aeronautical Society

Sohail has been a member of the Royal Aeronautical Society since 1986 and is Vice-Chair of its Air Transport Specialist Group Committee. He is a Chartered Engineer, with 35 years’ military aviation experience in Flight Test and Structural Design, holding a BEng (Hons) in Aerospace Engineering and MEng in Engineering Design. He regularly contributes to public debates, chairs industry conferences and is a member of key aviation sector forums on urban aviation with respect to vehicle design, biomimetics, ethics and city infrastructure.

His current role is as Client Engagement Manager with Innovate UK EDGE SE at Greenwich University, where he works on the thematic drivers of innovation across Industry, Academia, Government and Society; particularly societal response to new transport technologies.

Dr Richard Harrington Hon FRES

Royal Entomological Society Co-Chair
Meetings Committee Chair
Antenna Editor

Richard developed an interest in insects at a young age. He has a degree in Zoology and Applied Entomology from Imperial College. His PhD is also from Imperial, but the work was done at the Natural History Museum on aphids, many of which are important pests. His entire career was spent with the Rothamsted Insect Survey (which he eventually led) at the World’s largest agricultural research institute, Rothamsted Research. Here he worked on monitoring and forecasting aphids until his retirement in 2015. Richard joined the Royal Entomological Society in 1977 and is a former Vice-President. He is now an Honorary Fellow and trustee. He chairs the Meetings Committee and edits the Society’s quarterly bulletin, Antenna. In 2008, he bought on eBay an aphid fossilised in amber. It turned out to be a previously undiscovered species and was named Mindarus harringtoni Heie. Richard is proud to share his name with an old fossil.

Confirmed Speakers

Speaker 1 – Dai Whittingham

Chief Executive, UK Flight Safety Committee
Ex-RAF, Air Cdre, Deputy Commander
NATO Airborne Early Warning & Control Force.

Dai Whittingham joined the RAF as a pilot in 1974. He flew Phantoms for 7 years in the Air Defence fighter role. His early flying career included 3 years as a QFI providing basic flying training on the Jet Provost, and was also the Jet Provost display pilot.

Following attendance at the Royal College of Defence Studies, Dai was deployed as the Air Component Commander for all UK flying operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also chaired the Military Aviation Regulatory Group. His next UK staff tour saw him with responsibility for operational management and oversight of all RAF airborne surveillance platforms, including Predator and Sentinel, and the RAF Search and Rescue Force.

Dai’s last formal military appointment was as Deputy Commander for the NATO Airborne Early Warning and Control Force. Dai joined the UKFSC as Chief Executive in February 2012.

Speaker 2 – Dr Jason Chapman

Associate Professor of Migration Ecology
Centre for Ecology and Conservation
College of Life and Environmental Sciences
University of Exeter.

Dr Jason Chapman is a movement ecologist interested in the evolution of animal migration strategies, and the population and community-level effects of these long-range movements. He primarily studies insects and birds to answer these questions, and uses novel technologies including biological radars, weather radars, meteorological simulations, tethered flight techniques and genomic approaches to characterize migration ecology.

His research projects include insect compass navigation, using radars to monitor & forecast pest invasions, and developing continental-scale migration monitoring with collaborators, eg. EU COST Action “ENRAM” (the European Network for the Radar surveillance of Animal Movement), aimed at developing methods for studying the atmospheric movements of birds, bats and insects over the European continent (see www.enram.eu).

Note – We do not provide recordings of events or presentations as standard, unless otherwise stated.

This event will NOT be recorded and therefore will not be available post-event.

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121 people are attending Insects: RADAR detection and threats to aircraft – Virtual Talk 2022

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121 people are attending Insects: RADAR detection and threats to aircraft – Virtual Talk 2022