On 9 Jan 2006 12:05:59 -0800, wrote:


So fill the void yourself. Slide rule, #2 yaller pencil and the back
of an envelop, you're half way there. (You may use a calculator, if
you wish.)

I'm in the process of doing exactly that. ...and beyond that trying to
get a book written targetted to the amateur designer.

The other half has to do with the basic purpose of the 'Experimental -
Amateur Built' licensing category, in that it exists to foster
aeronautical education, which implies the need to know what you're
doing, if not from the outset, at least before first-flight.

the weakness in the argument is that there is no way for someone
learning to verify their calculations.
the absolute absence of calculations available for learning or
developing from means that while our building skills and confidence
may be in the second century of aviation our design skills are right
back there with the wright brothers.

And if that sounds slightly fey, as I'm sure it will to most of the
kit-assemblers, consider the other side of the coin: If the designer
provided you with detailed data, how would you know they were correct
without duplicating his calculations?

my point exactly. I want to verify the calculations. the aircraft I am
building is aerobatted by some and declared by others to have a 3.8g
ultimate wing. only access to the designers numbers will allow me to
sort the bs from the advertised claims and see what the actual
situation was when designed and now.

Even then, weight -- that is,
ACTUAL weight -- is a critical factor in those calculations. A lot of
home-builts were designed by midgets for others of their kind and often
cite weights and g-factors that are wildly fallacious if not out-right
lies. Stuff a two hundred fifty pound lard-ass in the cockpit, use
real numbers and the calculations for some of the most popular designs
are liable to read 'Lawn Dart.'

again if the original calculations were available the folly would be
easy to establish by running the calculations with the actual weight
against the design strengths.

Expecting the EAA to do something about your 'void' is wishful
thinking, in my opinion.

the eaa dont design aircraft. this is something that the eaa cant do.
this is however something that each and every designer can assist in
easily. I think that this black void in the homebuilding area actually
covers up a lot of ignorance. while it is easy to pretend that you
understand, in very many cases I have found that fear of ridicule is
behind keeping what calculations have been made secret.
we need to modify our environment to make the publication of design
calcs a part of creating a design. that way we will develop more
competent design knowledge in the community.

come to think of it the eaa I'm sure would be more than happy to add a
section to the members area to hold sets of design calcs.

I suggest the wiser course is to think for yourself If that requires
cracking a few books on airframe structural analysis, so be it. (Try a
search using 'fundamentals of aircraft structural analysis.' The books
are out there and fairly cheap, too -- apparently because nobody reads
them :-)
and all you get from that is a guessed set of figures which tell you
nothing about the oversights in design or the plain errors in
calculation that have crept through.
the design book that I was working through yesterday(Vogel) turns out
to have pages of stuffed up calculations in it. I learnt a lot from
working out that there must have been errors and correcting them but I
could have learnt far more with some valid example calcs to work
through.

if we are not to repeat all the mistakes and inefficiencies of the
last century of aviation, ie to progress to really efficient
homebuilts in the future, we really need to get the designs and the
calculations discussed not the bloody paint schemes.

think also on the consequences for safety. would all those guys have
died aerobatting in RV3's for instance if they had been able to see
the calcs for themselves? ...and to see how close they were pushing
it.
Stealth (working on it and I'm eaa712250 ) Pilot