Sender: <marv@lancaironline.net> (Marvin Kaye)
To: lml@lancaironline.net
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 12:33:22 -0400
Message-ID: <redirect-2581584@logan.com>
Disposition-Notification-To: Brent Regan <brent@regandesigns.com>
From: Brent Regan <brent@regandesigns.com>
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Subject: Re: Gross Weight & Balance of IV-P
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There is a long standing tradition in engineering to make improvements 
in successive generations of a design until there is a catastrophic 
failure. Usually the failure is a result of a focus on one element of 
the design and a failure to consider previously inconsequential factors.

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge resulted from a focus on building a slender, 
graceful structure and a failure to consider harmonic and aerodynamic 
effects.

This seems to be a natural human tendency and is not limited to the 
modern world. There is a pyramid in Egypt where the pitch of the sides 
changes half way up. It seems that in the pre-Viagra age, Pharaohs 
suffered from "Pointy Envy" where the guy with the steepest pyramid won. 
During the construction of the subject pyramid, word came down the 
valley of a pyramid failure. It seems the sides blew out of an overly 
steep pyramid because the even though a pyramid is made from orderly 
stacked blocks, those blocks act like sand at pyramid scales. The 
builder decided that a bent pyramid was better than no pyramid at all.

The design elements of an airplane are like a fishing net. All the 
elements are connected to all the other elements. Pull on one and all 
the others are effected. Keep pulling and something, somewhere will 
break. The incremental increases in gross weight that seem to be the 
fashion are mileposts on a road that ends at a cliff. If you keep 
driving down the road, someone will die.

In any given year you have about a 1 in 75 chance taking the big sleep. 
If someone else did something that increased your risk of injury, let 
alone fatality, by one part in 10,000 you would scream like hell. Why 
would you deliberately erode the safety margins on an activity that is 
already "high risk".  And to what end, so you can drag along more junk 
that you probably don't need or use.

Airplanes just barely do what they do and it is a privilege to do what 
all prior sapients have only dreamt. Don't abuse that privilege. It is 
better to leave one friend on the ground then to have a foursome at 
God's Golf and Country Club. Unless that is your objective........

Fly Safe.

Regards
Brent Regan