🚀 go-pugleaf

  - hi; in dipspc article, <20070715.1002.7083snz@flashy.nut>,
                 sum1@flashy.nut "Ian" responded:
>                       ppint. wrote:
>>             sum1@flashy.nut "Ian" volunteered:
[re perfection of beauty in an aircraft's design does, or does not
 correlate with perfection of performance and handling qualities]
>...
>>>And the late lamented Concorde, don't you think?
>>
>>	- indeed; there seemed to this ppint. to be quite a bit
>>	of the form of barnes wallis' proposed supersonic air-
>>	liner for (iirc) vickers in the lines of the concord[e].
>>
>Barnes Wallis designed a supersonic airliner, did he?  I never knew of
>this.
	- iirc (and i may not) it was the last project he worked
	on for vickers, before he retired. i don't now remember
	the project number with any certainty, but it was of the
	form, "V.1000" (i.e. possibly "V.3000" or "V.2000"); and
	it was the first aeroplane design i ever saw, that adopted
	the ogival wing. barnes wallis had determined it was quite
	simply the form most suitable for a supersonic airliner
	for engineering reasons, combining fuel storage, low drag,
	good lift, smooth performance throughout the speed range
	and especially through transition from sub-sonic to super-
	sonic speeds, where many [all?] other forms either suffer
	unpredictable compressibility effects, sudden major change
	in flying characteristics - or, if they avoid these, have
	rotten low-speed lift & poor manoeverability performance.

	- and it's beautiful, too *vbg* *obtopic*

>I think the first was the Comet in the early Fifties, but two of them
>went into the drink because of metal fatigue if I remember aright.

	- yes, as to the metal fatigue, spreading from the corner
	of the particular square window aperture, which is why all
	airliners now have much smaller, and more-or-less circular
	(or, at least, very rounded corner) "porthole" shape pass-
	enger windows; as did later marks of the de Haviland Comet
	also; but by then the merkins had caught up with hatfield,
	and the long-haul large-bodied passenger market went west.

	- but the Comet was strictly subsonic, as were and are all
	the boingggs! - and the deeceeses.
>
[re the D.H.88 "Comet" racer]
>>	but i don't actually remember now reading what she was like
>>	to fly. is there any account of her handling in a uk-pub-
>>	lished book, that you could recommend?
>>
>I'll pass on that one, but on the handling aspect, I spoke with a guy
>in a village pub once who trained pilots to fly the RAF Vulcan Bomber
>at a nearby airfield, Scampton, and when I remarked that it looked
>very cumbersome and heavy and must be a pig to fly, he  said, no it's
>a marvelously good aircraft and a delight to hfly. So, in that case at
>least, appearances were deceptive.

	- and in that respect :-), yes: have you never seen a pilot
	doing aerobatics in a Vulcan?  [a]
[>>]
>
>You seem to be very well clued up on aircraft. Are you in the industry,
>if I may make so bold as to ask?

	- no, no; not at all. but it's been an absorbing field of
	interest for me, for a long time now - i blame "capt." w.
	e. johns; and later larry forrester, paul brickhill, con-
	stance babbington-smith, and their colleagues; and also, of
	course, the exceptionally skilled, talented, intelligent
	and frequently very matter-of-factly brave people who were
	the central subjects of their accounts & biographies; and
	also the not-so highly gifted, maybe, who nevertheless per-
	formed parts, oftimes of equal and even greater value. [b]
>....
>>>Always willing to help out.  Unless it involves parting with money,
>>>of course....
>>	- you have a national stereotype, to which to live up?
>
>Scottish, you mean? Well, yes, also I was heavily influenced at some-
>where between my  6th and 8th year by reading A Christmas Carol. Hey,
>thinks I, this Scrooge guy has it right: stay single and avoid having
>to pay for childrens' upkeep and maintenance for some 18 years (for
>which huge outlay you get a zero return),

	- *g*  paying - in time, effort, consideration and energy as
	well as in money - for the raising of your, any partner[s]',
	friends', neighbours' and, ultimately the whole damned race's
	kids' upkeep, maintenance, civilisation & education is simul-
	taneously a form of investment where we've already received
	the dividends/interest - "it's reannual accountancy, terry!" -
	*and* in a half-way sane society, investment in our own well-
	being in our future, failing years - long-delayed and slow,
	until the final stage, may the eventual failure be.

>                                         don't go throwing your money
>around, frugal living, and repel any requests for a generous donation
>to a worthy cause with contempt. I didn't like the subsequent events
>in the story, when he hallucinates and loses his marbles and probably
>ended up a poverty-stricken bankrupt after having foolishly given away
>all his wealth.

	- hmm. "adequate-and-affordable" donations investing in
	the ability of the needy recipient[s] to become and remain
	selfsufficient, strike me as a necessary part of a sane in-
	vestment strategy, upon the personal, national and species
	levels, all; but dickens - and scrooge - lived in rather
	different circumstances from ours.
	  i _suspect_ scrooge will not've died a pauper, though he
	'll have quite possibly considerably reduced his capital:
	but he will have actually enjoyed the last twenty to forty
	years of his life, or the greater part of them; which will
	have been a major change from what would otherwise've been
	his likeliest prospects - no?

	(- "bah, humbug!" says the stereotype *g*)
>
>>	- the happy^W contented satisfaction of a puddleglum?
>> >>
>You been at the cooking sherry again?

	- ah, you've snipped the crucial context - without which,
	most of its implicit references fall.

	- love, ppint.
	[the address from which this was posted bounces e-mail;
	 please change the "f" to a "g" and drop the "v" if you
	               wish to cc. or e-mail me.]

	[a] - it's ever-so-slightly awe-inspiring...

	[b] - "and some there be, that have no memorial..."
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