Popular Technotes…

I have run this blog for almost a decade now in order to pass on and share my research and technical know-how related to the amazing designs of historical aircraft.

The blog is a journal to document my experiences on this journey with articles on the various aircraft designs interspersed with a bunch of Technotes. There’s a lot of stuff so I thought it may be prudent to compile a list of the more popular technotes to date:

Technotes Selection:

1. Technote: Inventor Sketch Datum: The importance of selecting the correct datum points when offseting work planes.
2. Technote: Inventor face Draft: This uses a part from the P39 that required facedrafts, similar to forging and catsing requirements.
3. Technote: Positioning Holes in Complex Surfaces: Complex surface hole positioning.
4. Hoppers: Surface Modelling for Mass Containment: Slightly off-topic but nevertheless relevant; describes the best way to model hoppers for mechanical handling projects.
5. Technote Sopwith Pup: Spar Clip Technote: An article discussing some of the design vagaries for the Sopwith Camel as well as in-depth use of sheet metal development.
6. Technote Bell P-39: Modelling Curved Cockpit Glass: Inventive use of Inventor design features to develop complex cockpit glass.
7. Technote: Bell P-39 Creating Wing Fillets: 3D Sketches and workplanes used to develop the complex flanges for the P39 wing fillets.
8. Technote: Sheet Metal Bending in CAD: General technical details for sheet metal bends.
9. CAD Library: A large selection of CAD resources.
10. Other Blog: Pioneering modular workflow and design solutions for use of 3D CAD in Substation design for the Power Industry that defied “expert” optinion. Prior to my work on this subject there was no viable solution for this industry. This was a long time ago but much of the subject matter is still pertinent to the industry today.

Theres a bundle of other interesting stuff and discussions on CAD, design as well as a number of articles on Excel.

I came across a site that provided a link to this blog describing it as a “guy that does CAD from aviation blueprints”. Actually they could not be more wrong. Sure there is a stack of CAD related stuff but the serious work is researching and compiling accurate dimensional data. Did you know for example that the top of the rear fuselage for the P-51D Mustang has only 4 verifiable ordinate points…prior to my documenting this no one actually knew this. The ordinates came from blueprints, reports, manuals and letter correspondence..the latter consumed a lot of time. I am probably only one of a handful of people who has actually studied every single drawing in the P-51 Mustang archive. This is serious research not just CAD!