Originally Posted by
Quemerford
...and a natty radiator outlet beneath the tailplane, ahead of the rudder. Another beautiful machine.
I'm not saying this just to be argumentative, but I really wonder about "beautiful." It seems to me to suffer from the exaggeration and unbalance (from a purely aesthetic point of view) that often goes with racers and extreme speed machines. I'm thinking of the Gee Bee racers, for instance. Someone might say that this is a very subjective thing, which is true, but I noticed when I went to Wikipedia to look up the Heston-Napier, the author of the article puts "beautiful" in quote marks; and also that this aircraft rather spectacularly did NOT fly right.