On 2010-08-19 4:47 PM, [email protected] wrote:
Oh, boy...
Reverend Burkhead ain't gonnabe happy. *; - )*
Eliacim and Bart,
Naw, I'm not unhappy about disagreement. I do hope that we can find out
/*why*/ we disagree so we can find the right of it.
My previous post */was/* speaking /ex-cathedra from my belly-button/ and
so was cloaked in /papal infallibility/. But, if I haven't convinced
the doubters then either I didn't explain it well, didn't understand it
completely myself or perhaps I'm just downright wrong.
It's good to keep trying, sometimes, to figure out the differences.
In my first 14 or so years of Ercouping, one of the great benefits of
the EOC was that Fred Weick like to come to virtually all our national
conventions, Oshkosh and many regional fly-ins. We could usually
persuade him to have a talking session in which, for a half hour or an
hour, he'd tell us about the development of the Coupe, the design
features and the decisions leading up to them.
Those talks were precious!
In these modern times, all those would be recorded by several people.
But, back then, in the years before Fred's death in around '93 or '94, a
videotape system was not something readily available. Few of those
sessions got recorded. (Anyone who has recording, PLEASE contact me.)
In addition, we'd follow Fred around the airport like a comet tail,
listening to his conversations with airplane owners and asking him more
questions. My respect for him was quite high. Was he a diety? No.
Certainly no more than a saint! :-)
My evaluation of him, though, is that he was a */very/* thoughtful and
careful engineer. His designs were years and sometimes decades ahead of
the competition. He has received the compliment of having most of his
innovations incorporated into most new aircraft (though rarely all of
them in a single aircraft).
I'll break the technical issue into a separate message.
Ed
