Tophe's slanting views

[jcf]

  

[jcf]

why was the SE-100 built then ? I think it can work, maybe this is not the best, but there is probably a balance to decide. :)

To be honest, it's sometime hard to understand why the French aircraft designers of the 20s and 30s did anything as they made an awful lot of really bad mistakes (frequently resulting in appallingly ugly aircraft). In this case it appears that the intent was to reduce landing gear weight. However, if you look at the SE 100, you'll see that the nose gear is enormous. In order to accommodate the wheels in the tail and to reduce the amount the nose drops after landing, the fuselage is also swept downward to place the tailplane and wheels closer to the ground without needing landing gear legs at all. What you don't see is that the tail structure has had to be beefed up to take the loads considerably more than otherwise.

There's a reason other aircraft didn't copy this arrangement. It's overly heavy, if somewhat simpler, mechanically.

What purpose does the asymmetric or double pod design serve?  Two pods like that, so close together, cause greatly increased drag so doing it needs some sort of reason.

Does it need a reason beyond artistic aesthetics?

To me it does because Tophe is drawing airplanes and airplanes come with a body of knowledge and physics that define certain aspects of their shape and function. There are a couple of sayings in the aircraft design world, one is "form follows function" and the other is "if it looks right it is right". Regarding the first, drawing something where the form violates that body out knowledge without some functional justification pushes the design aesthetically into the "unattractive" regime. Pushed too far and it no longer "looks right" and so isn't right. It jars against the senses of what looks right and, again, becomes unattractive.

I realise we're discussing (arguing) matters of taste here. I'm by no means unimaginative or unwilling to take aesthetic leaps, but for me (again, I stress for me) if one is going to use aircraft elements as purely aesthetic elements, why bother retaining any of the forms of physical reality? Why have the wings horizontal? Why have the wheels on the bottom? If it's pure art, why be limited to any of the strictures of reality? However if you are limiting yourself to even most of the structures of real life, then you also start to become affected by the aesthetics and physics of real life, in which case things need some sort of internally coherent rationale for their existence. And, if they speak reasonably to that rationale become able to be appreciated for their aesthetics.

In other words, if one insists on drawing something that looks like an airplane one leaves oneself open to the design being critiqued as an airplane and not as cubist or surrealist art. Make it obviously art and the airplane critiques would fall away and the pure aesthetics become the reason for viewing, not the airplane-ness.

Paul

Nobody else is critiquing anything, you're the only person making an issue out of his whimsy.

BTW 'form follows function', an expression coined in 1896, comes from modernist architecture and industrial design, not aircraft design. Also, the other hoary expression, as occasionally used in an aircraft context, isn't "if it looks right it is right", rather it is stated as "if it looks right, it'll fly right". Anyhow, while 'form follows function' is an actual design maxim, and often used in opposition to pre-existing aesthetic standards, particularly those of pre-20th century architecture and design, the latter expression is not.

[Tophe]

It seems the word "art" may be inappropriate, I prefer "fantasy", "fun", I do not pretend to reach "objective beauty".
I do like transforming a little an aircraft into something impossible, or obviously wrong (to be rejected, not built and flown at all).
The argument "if I draw an airplane, I accept to be criticized if this is a bad airplane for customers" is completely wrong: I am not at all a professional engineer taking money from customers, coming after pleasant advertisement, not at all. I am a lab-tech in microbiology, just playing (in the evening) in inventing crazy shapes inspired by airplanes. If Walt Disney draws a mouse that speaks, will you criticize him because mouses are real animal and real mouses don't speak? please shut up and let the dreamers dream. if you don't like this, feel free to follow your own way, but don't come here to criticize. My son is 7 years old and I learn to him "be gentle and the others may be gentle with you, if you are bad with the others they will be angry and so they will be bad with you, this is a bad calculation for you". You should complain about your father, having not learned you life properly, killermodeler.

[Kerick]

Build what you want to build, draw what you want to draw!
This is all about having fun so do it the way you like!
Speaking for myself, if I like something I try to say something positive and encouraging. If I don't like it, I just let it pass.
Tophe, I love your imagination! Keep doing what you do so well.....

[Tophe]

Thanks a lot kerick.
I feel almost like you. The only little point to add is that I do like the opinion of our engineer elmayerle: he may smile gently about a crazy delirium of us then add that of course it cannot work because of this and this technical reasons. That is not criticizing severely (meaning "stupid, bad"!) but showing why engineers don't use such a recipe, which is thus simply pleasant delirium like science-fiction, or fantasy without even science.

[taiidantomcat]

To me it does because Tophe is drawing airplanes and airplanes come with a body of knowledge and physics that define certain aspects of their shape and function. There are a couple of sayings in the aircraft design world, one is "form follows function" and the other is "if it looks right it is right". Regarding the first, drawing something where the form violates that body out knowledge without some functional justification pushes the design aesthetically into the "unattractive" regime. Pushed too far and it no longer "looks right" and so isn't right. It jars against the senses of what looks right and, again, becomes unattractive.

There is no engineering or scientific "rule" about "looks right is right" as looks are utterly subjective. its nothing more than an aphorism.  The F4U corsair doesn't "look right" it only "looks right" because the design is known. Lots of things that don't look right are right. All the Guppy planes, Helicopters, etc in fact SLUFs and BUFFs, F-4s, are "proudly" ugly and not right looking.



The poster child of doesn't look right, but is right.


Looks right/is right is often a HINDSIGHT judgement as well.

[Kerick]

IIRC the comment from a general when he first saw the F-4 Phantom was that it looked like some one had stepped on its nose and kicked it in the butt!

There is quite a difference between engineers and artists, thank heaven!

[Tophe]

I am not an engineer and I do not want at all to seduce a general: I am simply a (childish) dreamer and a (naive) pacifist.

PS. Sorry for my imperfect English, it seems I mixed "learn" and "teach", that are the same word in my language ("apprendre")

[Tophe]

As an example: today I have drawn 3 new Lightnings, and I do not pretend at all they are very good, to be built and flown and ordered and operated, no they are completely crazy and of course will (would) be rejected, I am just having fun drawing them. If that makes you smile I am happy, but if you don't like just go elsewhere, no need to shout that I am stupid, no I am a dreamer only...

[Tophe]

1975, France: before being accused to have illegally copied the General Dynamics F-16 into the Mirage F1.6, Dassault Aviation made a complaint towards General Dynamics, for having illegally copied their Mirage F1.6 project... who was right? (Dassault according to the French judge, G.D. according to the American one...)

[Tophe]

The trial lasted till 1976, when another issue occurred at the tribunal: a complaint against Aerospatiale and UK, "guilty" to have copied the twin-engined Mirage-1980 with their "Concorde"...

[apophenia]

Nice! Makes me think of the single-engined BAC 221/Fairey Delta make-over  :)

[Tophe]

Thanks!

Was the Spat-Vampire the very first jet-plane with spats?

[Tophe]

The DB-610 powered Fokker "D-23 II" of 1945 did not need 2 separate engines anymore:

[GTX_Admin]

 :)

[apophenia]

Lovely! Your D-23 II is a great blend of push-pull Fokker D-XXIII and de Schelde S.21  :)

[Tophe]

Thanks!
And did you know that the farmer Airtruk was a derivative of the P-38? Here are the missing links:

[apophenia]

Now I know    I especially like the biplane P-38 Airtruk  :)

[Tophe]

Thanks!
And here are designs to refuse (by the boss of the design bureau, on April 1st) for sure: P-38ESM, P-38WI, P-38AP (Et Si Jamais = French words for And If Ever, What If, Almost Possible):

[AXOR]

The ''Almost Possible'' version is on my taste...definitely!

[GTX_Admin]

The AP version looks a bit like this one that I did ages ago:

[AXOR]

Heeeey I forgot this one!Awesome!

[apophenia]

The AP version looks a bit like this one that I did ages ago:

Shades of the Airspeed  AS.31  :)

[Tophe]

Thanks! Years ago, I drew a P-38AS-31 (below left):

[Kerick]

The AP version looks a bit like this one that I did ages ago:

Cut the two out side booms off and it looks a little retro Naboo!