Walt's Flying Hobbies
Past journal postings are at Walt's Aviation Journal.
Aircraft design documents are available here.
I have been infected by the flying bug since I can remember. My Dad, Frank,
worked at the TWA Training Center in Kansas City, Missouri. He was a foreman
for simulator maintenance. Our family regularly enjoyed our flight privileges
by flying across the country and quite a few international destinations. I
started building and flying model rockets and free-flight models in elementary
school, started with remote-control airplanes in high school, and eventually got
a Private Pilot's license and an aircraft of my own:
Alas, when I moved to Savannah, Georgia several years ago, I couldn't find a hanger
for my plane at a reasonable cost, so I sold the plane.
Besides these hobbies, I am also an aircraft designing and building enthusiast and
had a nice career in the Aerospace Industry. I started my career with a Master's
in Aerospace Engineering (see thesis here).
I have worked in the areas of aircraft performance, aircraft preliminary design,
and aircraft stability and control. I've specialized in aircraft flight manual
technical charts, flight instruction material, aircraft simulation with pilot in
the loop and without, computational fluid dynamics, competitive aircraft analysis,
and have edited volumes for DOD aircraft project proposals (notably the Boeing Military
Airplanes submission for the Navy LRAACA). It was a lot of fun working in
aerospace until I got caught in one of those drastic layoff cycles that aircraft
companies do.
Enough history, I wrote that just so you know what you're looking through on these
pages. A bit of my history, a lot of things I'm doing or planning with my
flying hobbies. If you are looking into a subject I cover in this section,
you may benefit from my work or writing. At this point, I think it would be
worthwhile to make this section a sort of timeline along various categories.
I'll put the categories in here as I add material, and things will branch out from
there as needed by publish date or sub-category. Confusing enough? I'll
start with the things I'm excited about today:
September 12, 2007: Tom Waldeck's Aerodynamic Summary Sheets
Many years ago, Tom Waldeck of the Boeing Military Airplane Company provided a great
example to other engineers in the Aerodynamics Group through his behavior, quiet
expertise, and an ability and willingness to communicate good engineering practice
to the engineers he met. I was lucky to work with him from time to time.
He did a lot of things, including the creation of two compact summary sheets of
essential engineering formulas and conversion constants. While this information
is readily available across a variety of expensive aircraft engineering texts, I
have never seen anything as comprehensive in such a small package since getting
my copies. I would challenge a structural engineer or a propulsion engineer
to produce anything like Tom's summary.
The work speaks for itself, so here it
is.
Past journal postings are at Walt's Aviation Journal.
Aircraft design documents are available here.