Cliff "It Never Happened" Secord 🇺🇸🇷🇺 on Nostr: So a while ago, I told of a difficult client who wanted us to do some engineering ...

So a while ago, I told of a difficult client who wanted us to do some engineering work for a kitplane he wanted to manufacture & sell.

He asked us to investigate an airfoil geometry that he got "from an awesome aero guy who is the master at this stuff".

Oh we investigated it. It was pure shit; I've seen better geometries from skilled homebuilders who aren't even engineers. I've seen better curves at a Golden Corral. We even ran a CFD simulation of the foil on the wing planform of his aircraft to prove a point. The numbers and the flows indicated a full stall at an angle of attack well below predicted stall. We showed it to the client, and, despite the data showing that this was clearly a dangerous & unsuitable geometry, told us we were wrong, and demanded we use it on his aircraft. He gave every excuse for this geometry, including the retarded take of 'it's supposed to have reverse flow; that's the secret of this airfoil's genius!'.

What you see below are flow visualizations of a full stall of his 'aero god' buddy's 'brilliant' airfoil...what he insisted was 'confirmation bias & jealousy' on our part.

So, we loaded everything we did for him onto an external hard drive, boxed it up with a printed letter of severance, and FedEx'd it to him.

If he wants to pump 'a million dollars' (his words) into making this thing, it will kill somebody.

We're out.