John,
No Sir, I am not just stirring the pot! The day that I had the VG missing was one of the last times I flew last week. Prior to this day I had never considered the effect of not having such a device. I have not been to work since and therefore have not had the opportunity to investigate further with our engineers (should they still be employed (I hope they are)). The FCOM's I have at home are so unbelievably vague, I am lucky to have them detail far more important items of the aircraft. I am beginning to wonder if they want us to know very much about the aircraft at all !!
I look forward to hearing more after you have had the opportunity to look at them.
Zeke, On the 1900, I was of the belief that the tailets (the small horizontal fins) were the reason for the wide CoG, not the much larger ventral fins (at least that’s what it said in the book) but I concede that they probably all work together to perform many different functions in controllability/CoG Range/aerodynamics etc.
If what john said was true about designers not knowing if their test aircraft would come back or not, I would not like to have been near the Raytheon factory when the stuck a B200 tail on the 1900 along with a bunch of other fancy looking devices, for the first time. Blind luck I reckon!!
Cheers