At 09:02 PM 25/02/01 EST, you wrote:
>We all have short memories! Peter raised this once before in one of his
>diatribes and was corrected along exactly the same lines by another member
of
>the committee who participated in the deliberations.
Wasn't only GFA at the time. I was an SAGA vice president for a couple of
years or so back then (and Airspace Officer for a few more)and we spent
lots of time discussing the Platypus project.
As for the viability of the project nowadays, I don't think the world
really needs another medium performance two seater. The cockpit was great
and I loved the side by side seating. I took Harry on a cross country of
about 150km in it once and flew it to an airshow at Essendon(on tow from
Gawler)and even did some spin testing in it. Harry didn't tell me that we
were going spinning until off tow at 5000 feet. I violated the rule about
"don't fly in the same cockpit as someone braver than you " that day.
Carol went for a flight with Harry one day and she was waiting for him to
take some interest in the proceedings as the rope tightened and he said
"you do the takeoff". She said "Harry, I can't fly".(that has been
corrected now). Just as well it was a side by side cockpit.
As I said, the cockpit was great but nowadays you would want a new wing and
I think a retractable motor(at least a turbo). The wing was basically a
stretched Boomerang which is similar aerodynamically to an ASW15/19 wing.
I also did some of the data reduction for the little performance testing
that was done. It seemed to go about like a ballasted Standard Cirrus.
Given the ghastly Janus cockpit still on the front of the Nimbus 3D/4D(M) I
don't think a side by side cockpit would do much, if any, harm to the
performance.
Mike Borgelt
Borgelt Instruments - manufacturers of quality soaring instruments
ABN 75532924542
Box 7474 Toowoomba M.C.
Queensland 4352
Australia
Tel 0746 355 784
mob 0428 355 784
0429 355 784
fax 0746 358 796
International
phone: int'l+ 61 7 46 355 784
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int'l +61 4 29 355 784
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email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
website:www.ozemail.com.au/~mborgelt
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