amateur design consultant?

Jay wrote...

Get X-Plane...

...it will give you aerodynamic information that was
unavaiable to even the big boys 10 years ago...

1. Better make sure you understand what X-plane
*doesn't* tell you aerodynamically before you cut metal, and

2. Blade element theory's been around for a lot longer
than 10 years. X-Plane pulls it together in a slick
package for a household user, but people have been using it
for far longer than 10 years.

Dave 'assume a spherical cow' Hyde

A theory and a usable implimentation are very different things. A
slick package that hasn't been available to anyone until recently
thanks to the technology development pushed by the personal computing
boom. I've been working aerospace for years and seen the calibre or
software they used 10 years ago and it sucked big time compared to
what is available for $5 to any hobbiest with an E-bay account.

.."nauga" wrote in message link.net...
Jay wrote...

Get X-Plane...

...it will give you aerodynamic information that was
unavaiable to even the big boys 10 years ago...

1. Better make sure you understand what X-plane
*doesn't* tell you aerodynamically before you cut metal, and

2. Blade element theory's been around for a lot longer
than 10 years. X-Plane pulls it together in a slick
package for a household user, but people have been using it
for far longer than 10 years.

Dave 'assume a spherical cow' Hyde

Jay wrote...

I've been working aerospace for years and seen the calibre or
software they used 10 years ago and it sucked big time compared to
what is available for $5 to any hobbiest with an E-bay account.

Done a lot of CFD then, have you? Look, I agree with what I
*think* you're trying to say, in that the tools in use in
industry then and now today aren't always as 'user friendly'
as what's available on the open market, but to say that
XPlane provides *accurate* aero data that the big guys couldn't
do equally as well 10 years ago is not only misleading, it's
flat out wrong. XPlane simply makes it available (and affordable)
on the open market, for the layman. Whether said layman is
wise to blindly accept the output of this type of software
without understanding its limitations is another matter
altogether. It's not difficult to guess which side of that
argument I'm on.

Dave 'GIGO' Hyde