jeff findley wrote:

Richard Lamb writes:

Igor Sikorski was quoted something like,

"There are good designers with good designs,
good designers with bad designs,
bad designers with good designers
and bad designers with bad designs.

If designers flew their own designs,
there would soon be only good designers
with good designs."

Pretty cocky, huh?

As an experienced amateur aircraft designer,
given to occasional fits of introspection,
and one who flies his own design,
I often wonder where I fit in that list.

Since you're still alive, Igor would say your design is good. It says
little about whether or not you're a good designer, because bad
designers can have good designs. Build and fly a few more
experimental aircraft and Igor might say that you're a good designer,
if you live through all the test flights. ;-)

Jeff
--
Remove "no" and "spam" from email address to reply.
If it says "This is not spam!", it's surely a lie.

I've done eight of 'em in 15 years.

Faulty hardware is something we deal with all the time.
Most often from service wear.
Especially in hard use.
Sometimes for maintenance errors.
Occassionally from design faults, metal fatugue, overstress, etc.

It just comes along for free when you mave to make complez
machinery that is light enough to fly.

But even a Boeing 7^7 is only a pale glimmer of the complexity
involved in designing and building something on the level of
the Orbiter.

As much as I know about airplanes, I _know_ I'm not qualified to
question whether some system may or may not have been needed.

Especially on the first design - ever.

Forgive me if you can, but this whole thread reads like a Monday
morning criticism by someone with too much detailed knowledge
about one tiny piece of a huge 3D puzzle.


But that's just me.
I could be wrong.

Richard