aw shucks
Tenny
I wish I could say all that really counts in one hundred words but it is a beaut of a subject. For all I have done I love prop aircraft dearly and surely there are fewer schools of pure joy than whamming a C-130 through the valleys as some do (not me) or batting 20min sectors in the Caribbean in a Dash 8 as still others do. Fair play to those who have done both. Gentlemen and women my hat is aloft, I was but a driver.
Talking about aircraft and engines and why they are the shape they are is for me still a passion. I suggest that if you can dig BEagle up and get him started on the A400M you will learn a massive amount about what can be done when you transform the conventional into the unconventional. I don't buy all the A400M puff because you can have what they say but not all at the same time. Brochurespeak and the art of its translation by the unwary is fraught.
You may care to know that during WW2 Rolls-Royce and Bristol collaborated to form "Rotol" propellers and they had a drawing office in a London suburb. Mrs "E" having dragged me to Europe to be cultured I had the chance to look up an old gent now in his nineties who is a by-word in all things propeller. When you consider also that the Polish gent who designed much of the Chipmunk was also an aerodynamicist or a stress engineer on Concorde (I forget which) these old guys stun me. I could tell you zillions about the A400M prop design, but then I'd have to kill you.
Anyway got to go and visit another cathedral I guess.
"E"