solid modelling in industry 54 years ago

[Will]

Chaps,

I found this film / movie last night while googling, which may be of interest.

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=70

It should be a British Pathe newsreel called "Model Aircraft for Testing Use".  Hoepfully its available to those of you outside the UK.

There's a lovely wooden Sea Hawk and a metal Hunter being worked on.  It says its at the Armstrong Whitworth works so presumably they'd been subsumed into the Hawker empire by '56 or were subcontracting for them.

I doubt i'll ever be able to model to an accuracy of 1/10 of a thousandth of an inch!!!  Though the wind tunnel (shed???) and airflow testing seem a bit basic to worry about the modelling accuracy.

regards
Will Booth

[lastvautour]

Nice movie, but as you mentioned, not exactly state of the art even for those days. I was privileged to refurbish a 1/14 scale Tutor that was used in wind tunnel test at the Nationa Research Council facility in Ottawa. I found that the overall dimension were very exact, however the contours of the intakes and the canopy were poorly shaped. I never did find out what the project was for, but the model was assess at $18,000.00 CDN in 1985. The model was transferred to my section and onced I had fixed some cracks and repainted it, we hung from the ceiling until the department moved and the building torn down. I have no clue as to where it may be today. I thought I had uploaded the picture taken in 1986, alas I cannot find it. I will look again and repost.

Lou

[Oceaneer99]

Neat site, too.  There are lots of neat videos there.

Garet

[lastvautour]

Found the photo of me and the NRC model.

It was around this time that I started doing solids again.

Lou