AlexHopmann.com

I’ll be giving a 5-min talk at Ignite Seattle next Thursday on the topic of airplane engines. I think they are trying to expand the talks beyond computer technology and there is a bunch of interesting things to talk about that should appeal to the “I want to know how everything actually works” crowd.

The funny thing about aircraft engines is they are based on similar technology as car engines, but in many ways they have been frozen in time by a number of factors. Many of the things that are automatic and high-tech in your car are still manual in an airplane because the manual approaches are more reliable, plus we tend to put a bit more effort into training about how the thing works than your typical car driver.

The other facinating thing is that despite the technology being basically the same for the past 60 years, pilots have recently rediscovered techniques that let us get 20% or more better fuel efficiency out of our engines. I’d actually been flying for 5 or so years before I took a course and finally learned about what’s actually going on in an internal combustion engine and how to get the most out of it.