Not a Goldschmied Fuselage, but Still Wonderfully Low Drag

Dean Sigler Electric Aircraft Components, Electric Powerplants, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Following your editor’s blog entry on the Prandtl wing and erroneously named Goldschmied fuselage, he received this correction from Dr. Brien Seeley, President of the Sustainable Aviation Foundation and one of the creators of the body in question. “However, it is, I think, important to note:  We did not fabricate a Goldschmied body and it is incorrect to refer to ours as one. Ours is original, unique and it does not at all rely upon Goldschmied’s annual suction approach (aft boundary layer treatment). A Goldschmied body studied at Cal Poly is shown along with a link to its 205 page study.  It differs by having a pointed nose and sharp convergence at the rear annular inlet to create the concave internal diffuser. To gain a better idea of what a real Goldschmied body is, your editor reviewed the thesis by a Cal Poly graduate student that details his efforts to test Fabio Goldschmied’s claims for his radical fuselage design.  Dr. …

An Image of the Future at the 2017 Sustainable Aviation Symposium

Dean Sigler Electric Aircraft Components, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

The Seeleys and SA board members did themselves proud for this year’s Sustainable Aviation Symposium.  Your editor visited the grand ballroom in the San Francisco Bay Pullman Hotel the night before the meeting was to take place.  All the tables, chairs and stage were in place, but the room was otherwise bare.  Early next morning, your editor trudged downstairs again, to be met with an astonishing sight.  At the back of the ballroom, a pair of exotic geometric shapes glowed in blue and green lighting.  Somehow, a 50-foot wing and substantial streamlined shape had materialized overnight.  Already, attendees were peering up at the extremely twisted tips of the wings and trying to analyze what they saw before them. Aspirational Geometries These elements comprise a pairing of what may be the two lowest-drag objects in aviaton.  Their goemetic purity evoke those kind of aspirational feelings reportedly felt by attendees at the 1939 World’s Fair when they saw the Trylon and Perisphere …

David Birkenstock and Ultimate Efficiency

Dean Sigler Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

According to his biography on Airliners.net, “David Birkenstock is a pilot for an east-coast charter and management firm, flying the Turbo Commander 690B and the BeechJet 400A. When he’s not flying, he’s working on modifying a light sport airplane for pressure thrust, hoping to enter it into the NASA Personal Air Vehicle Challenge. He has posted more information about pressure thrust at PressureThrust.com.” Birkenstock’s presentation at the fifth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium in Santa Rosa, California on April 29, 2011 extended his thoughts on pressure thrust, an outgrowth of Fabio Goldschmied’s theories that are well represented in the CAFE Foundation’s library. Most surprising (or maybe not surprising at all) in his talk were comments by major players in the aerospace industry. Around 2000, a senior airflow fellow for a “major airframe manufacturer was quoted as saying, “Our position is that aviation is a mature business and that the discoveries waiting to be identified are probably not worth looking for, much …