AMEN!!!
-----Original Message-----
From: Don Stackhouse @ DJ Aerotech [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2000 12:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Mike Carris
Subject: Re: [RCSE] HLG in the form of flying wings
There are a couple things wrong here.
1. The moral issue. Adam Weston and his friends made the necessary HUGE
investment in developing a good model, turning it into a kit, putting
together a company, building tooling and equipment, buying materials, etc.,
and now that they've figured out a design that works plus gone to all that
trouble, effort and expense, you want someone to GIVE you some of the
parameters of the design so you can try to "copy" it.
2. The practical issue. There's FAR more to the design of a sailplane than
just the airfoils. In fact, airfoils are a relatively small part of the
total picture. If taken outside of the context of the rest of the design,
knowing what airfoil(s) are used is essentially MEANIMGLESS trivia.
If you started with just the knowledge of the airfoils used and an
approximate idea of the size and shape, what you would end up with would in
all probability be a poor imitation of one of TGW's kits. Odds are that you
would have to build and test several prototypes before you got something
even close from a performance standpoint, and at that point you would
probably still have quite a bit of work yet to go on getting the stability
& handling right. By the time you were finished, you would probably have
invested far more in blood, sweat, tears, and material $$ than the price of
a kit.
If you want the experience of designing your own airplane from scratch,
that's fine. However, don't fool yourself into thinking you've accomplished
that by trying to copy someone else's design. Make the effort to study the
engineering issues and develop a design of your own. That's how you get
that feeling of true accomplishment. Copying someone else's design is like
copying off of someone else's test paper in class. Even if you get an "A",
you will know that you don't really deserve it, and that you're benefitting
illicitly from someone else's work. The only way to feel like you've
accomplished something worthwhile is if you put the same sort of effort
into your own design that someone else had to put into theirs.
If, OTOH, you want a model that flies well and don't want to spend any more
than you have to, then don't fool yourself into thinking that scratch
building will be a quick and cheap route to that goal. Unless you are very
lucky, you will end up spending far more to get to the same level of
performance, handling and fun than it would cost if you'd just bought the
kit.
When you buy a kit, you're not just buying the materials in the box; you're
also buying the value of all the engineering, investment and effort that
went into developing and producing that kit. In most kits, the value of
those "intangibles" far exceeds the portion of the kit cost that's
allocated to them. If you really want to see the state of the art continue
to advance, allow the folks who do the work, and make the sacrifices, to
reap the rewards they deserve.
Don Stackhouse @ DJ Aerotech
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.bright.net/~djwerks/
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