🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <20070718.1159.70706154snz$@i-m-t.demon.co.uk>
           v$af$ppint@i-m-t.demon.co.uk "ppint. at IMT" writes:

>   - hi; in dipspc article, <1184563621snz@nospam.demon.co.uk>,
>                 pete@nospam.demon.co.uk wrote:
> >       v$af$ppint@i-m-t.demon.co.uk "ppint. at IMT" writes:
> >>            sum1@flashy.nut "Ian" volunteered:
> >>>           pete@nospam.demon.co.uk wrote:
> >>>>                 [i, too, contributed:]
> >>>>>
> >>>>>   - an interesting principle, the - or at least an - exact
> >>>>>   inverse of the principle used to make first evaluations
> >>>>>   of the designs of such aeroplanes, as the vickers-super-
> >>>>>   marine spitfire and the de haviland mosquito: that their
> >>>>>   lines were so beautiful, they *had* to be right...
> >>>>
> >>>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].
> >
> >Really?  Like Ian I had no idea that Barnes Wallis was ever 
> >involved/interested in supersonic flight..
> 
>         - yes, really; iirc, he was one of the team designing
>         this for vickers: i don't have further details to hand,
>         but i suspect he was one of the senior (as in main, as
>         well as in terms of hierarchy and of age) members of
>         vickers' aeroplane design department, given his involve-
>         ment in the field from [at least] the R.100, the vickers
>         wellesley, and the WW II wellington.

All I could find on a [albeit brief] web search was reference to 
the Swift: a swing-wing design that looked more like something 
out of Star Wars than Planet Earth, mid-1900s.  But interesting 
nonetheless and very futuristic at a time when supersonic flow 
was far less understood than it is today.

> >>>>Indeed so and I'm sure few would disagree.  I would even include
> >>>>the DH Comet (the air racer, not the airliner) in that list.
> >> 
> >>      - the pointy-nosed D.H.88 had, aside of the engine nacelles
> >>      and undercarriage (when down), lines that flowed beautifully
> >>      smoothly - but i don't actually remember now reading what
> >>      she was like to fly. is there any account of her handling
> >>      in a uk-published book, that you could recommend?
> >
> >Im sure there must be; best bet to try would probably be the 
> >Shuttleworth Collection bookshop.  However I did find this 
> >(apparently US) page on the www:
> >
> > <http://www.flightsim.com/cgi/kds?$=main/feature/comet/comet.htm>
> 
>         - thank-you; i haven't yet followed the link, but i most
>         definitely shall do so.
> >
> >[hope I type that properly].
> 
>          -                 [or, leastways, attempt to do so :-)]

Or "typed", even.  I blame the grape juice ;-)

> >ISTR from the distant past that the DH88 was a handful at low speed,
> >prone to tip stalling and generally very unforgiving.  But hey, it
> >was designed to win races -- and not have its beautiful aerodynamics
> >spoilt by "safety features" like washout or being stable ;-)
> 
>         - hmm? it was designed specifically for that one, very
>         long-distance race, was it not?  so, whilst i fully take
>         your point with regard to the dispensability of safety
>         features having a significant extra drag (or weight) cost,
>         i'd've thought stability in flight would be regarded as an
>         asset much greater than high manoeverability: it's not as

<Anorak Mode>
Stability comes at a price: drag -- both from profile drag of the 
tail surfaces [keep them as small as possible!] and induced [trim] 
drag when they actually produce aerodynamic lift/down/side force. 
And because they are by design (and for good reason) low aspect 
ratio aerofoils, the less "work" they do the better.  The ideal 
arrangement to achieve this is with the longitudinal centre of 
gravity at the "aft limit" or neutral point -- the point at which 
there is no longitudinal stability.  Practicality usually means 
that fuel tank(s) are not located here, so without a sophisticated 
fuel management (= extra weight) stability will vary as fuel is 
burnt.  I guess pilots of the day had to be of the "like it or 
lump it" calibre.  Probably "lump it" ;-)  Anyway, this is dis.pc 
and not the right place really to discuss tail volume ratios...
</Anorak Mode>

>         though the ability to make the sharpest turns around some
>         pylon in a field every six hundred yards would be highly
>         prized in a race of some sixty thousand miles, is it? [a]

Sixty??  I thought it was Capetown and back [BICBW].

> >Actually I believe that a helicopter will "glide" under pure 
> >autorotation if power is lost.  The only drawback is that one 
> >needs lots of height and or speed to enter this state.
> 
>         - i understood (perhaps incorrectly) that this requires
>         a modification at the rotor root away from that of the
>         pure helicoptor, as the pure helicopter's rotors (unlike
>         those of the autogyro) do not generate lift when wind-
>         milling freely.
>           which is not to say that such safety modifications are
>         not now commonly made, of course.

No experience here, though I'd assume that the range of the 
collective pitch would allow a sufficient "negative" position to 
allow autorotation.  Any loon^H^H^H^Hhelicopter pilots here to 
confirm or deny this?

[..]
> >Thanks for the help.  However I have to confess that I've been 
> >messing around in demon.test and can now proudly confirm that the 
> >new code works as expected.  Sadly however, in the course of this 
> >testing I found an unrelated "feature" with long message-IDs and 
> >variously sized fixed-length buffers :-( so spent a lot of 
> >yesterday removing all those and replacing them with dynamically 
> >allocated ones.
> 
>         - was this not a replacement programme  you intended to
>         undertake, eventually?
>           [or was it one you were leaving, in the hopes that an-
>         other dipspc-er possessed of the now-legendary "copious
>         free time of a john washington" might cave in, and tackle
>         it first?]

I really should switch to the JLW version (and after this recent 
fiasco probably will!); the main reason I've stuck with this GeK 
version is that I've tweaked it over the years to do a few things 
that are not in the JLW version.

> >Still a small display problem, but the articles themselves seem
> >uncorrupted; more work to do there...
> 
>         - that *sounds* as though you regard the non-corruption
>         of articles as a feature devoutly to be deprecated...

:-)  I might have phrased that better...  I was of course 
referring to work to do on the display problem; but as this 
"problem" only happens when a msg-id is longer that the screen 
width (usually 80 chars here) it's not a show stopper.

[snip rest, though C.S.Lewis comments acknowledged]

refs up to 843 chars now -- not much further to go!

Pete
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