🚀 go-pugleaf

Er,  are we still on duty extending this now very offtopic thread to
allow the mechanic to tinker with his software?
I'll chance it anyway.....

v$af$ppint@i-m-t.demon.co.uk wrote:

>   - hi; in dipspc article, <20070715.1002.7083snz@flashy.nut>,
>                  sum1@flashy.nut "Ian" responded:
> [re perfection of beauty in an aircraft's design does, or does not
> >>      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
>         - 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*
>
It wouldn't have been the first  "airbus' airliner, would it?  I worked
briefly (nights) in the early Sixties at the factory in south Manchester
where the Vulcan V-
bomber was being built, and alongside its production line, they were
also building an airbus.  I paid more attention to the Vulcan so don't
remember much about the other aircraft.

> >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.
>
I've flown the Atlantic three times in recent years and on the two
flights where I got a window seat, I found myself touching the rims of the
porthole, to see if any ominous cracks were developing! I also listened
closely to the sound of the engines, but they never missed a  beat.

>         - but the Comet was strictly subsonic, as were and are all
>         the boingggs! - and the deeceeses.
> >
I could  have sworn the Comet was a jet. Memory banks are going to pieces.


> >>
> >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]
> [>>]
> >
The ones taking off from Scampton always flew a straightforward, sober
course. Of course, if these were training flights, they wouldn't be
likely to throw the thing about I supppose. And equally unlikely if they
were routine flights practising for the real thing.
On one occasion, I was cycling back from another town, and paused  just
past  the airfield for a smoke, and a Vulcan took off and passed  almost
overhead at a veery low altitude: I literally dropped my cigarette and
clapped my hands over my ears- the noise level was just terrifying. The
comical thing was, a farmworker in a field a quarter of a mile away,
didn't even look up, just kept driving his tractor-plough thing.
Earplugs?  Total deafness from previous exposure to it?

> >You seem to be very well clued up on aircraft. Are you in the industry,
>
>         - 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]
> >....
Aha, very like my lifelong interest (obsession) in war and military
history, with especial reference to the  1914 - 1945 caper. Probably
caused by growing up and becoming  aware that I'd just missed something
immensely important and exciting....
Dear old Biggles and his gang, Ginger Lacey, the Honorable Somebody, et
al. And his sworn enemy, Von Scheinehund who was always getting foiled.
Later of course I read the likes of Brickhill's The Last Enemy, Douglas
Bader's Reach for the Sky, and I Flew for the Fuehrer, and The One That
Got Away, Elleston Trevor's Squadron Airborne.
Have you read Len Deighton's  Goodbye Mickey Mouse?  It mainly ccenters
round a USAAF fighter squadron in 1944, flying the  ... P41 was it? It's
described as a powerful engine with wings, brutally fast, lots of
firepower. It has some of the best descriptions of aerial combat I've
read.
And a poignant twist at the end too.

> >>>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.
>
Oh, I didn't get much in the pre-paid return!  Food rationing, a tiny
amount of weekly pocket money, harsh discipline at school, I'm surprised we
survived at all! Education was pretty good but I only ggot  eight years
of it. Things could only get better after that...

> >                                         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.
Some of the annual demand from the Federal income tax scoundrels I have to fork
out should go to these worthy causes  IMO. But King George the First fixed
it so that charitable organizations would do it instead.
>           i _suspect_ scrooge will not've died a pauper, though he
>         'll have quite possibly considerably reduced his capital:
Exactly! And that's bad news. The moreit accumulates themore it
generates: a wonderful setup. But recklessly giving any par tof it away
... shudder. God forbid. Why, it's a kind of black heresy!

>         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?
>
I'll take the miserable friendless life any day, if the alternative is
parting with cash to feed the needy! (Are there no workhouses, are there
no prisons?)
And if anyone comes round at Christmas with jolly seasonal greetings on
their lips, well, let them look out for the anti-personnel mines  I've
strategically planted in my front yard .... heh heh.
>         (- "bah, humbug!" says the stereotype *g*)
> >
I do in fact tend to say similar, more up to date  things in that vein as
the Yuletide season comes around. It doesn't cost me a cent, needless to
say.
> >>      - 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.
>
Oh, it's a quote?  Not one I recognize I'm afraid.

>                        wish to cc. or e-mail me.]
If the need for keeping this thread is now gone, I'll have to if you wish
to take it further. My Reply To address is of course not valid.
>         [a] - it's ever-so-slightly awe-inspiring...
>
>         [b] - "and some there be, that have no memorial..."

--
Ian