Paul,

That story about the L1011 is funny, I can see why he would say that if he wasn't familiar with flight at those Mach numbers.

I remember we were working on wind tunnel testing a shoulder wing variable sweep model in the MCAIR Polysonic Wind Tunnel (before Boeing and Douglas). Whitcom had just produced a paper or something on his airfoil. The leaders that be, geniuses all, decided we needed one. Since the idea came up on the shift I was aero rep for and since they knew I was a part time artist, it fell to me to make the airfoil out of red wax. On a 5% model you can guess at the level of precision needed if it was to work at all mixed up with some wild guesses as to location of transiston strips and all the other stuff. After several runs with the wax disappearing during each run (its a 4 ft cross section blow down tunnel and ran at a pretty high pressure) we wrapped the wing in clear tape to keep the wax on.

Well it worked just as well as the effort put into it would allow. POOR. It set back aerodynamics about two years until someone had the courage to make one out of aluminum as it should be.

There was also another airplane that was a low wing variable sweep design to land on a carrier. It was a real stretch of the F-4 design initially that at the end didn't look anything like it. To get enough pitch control to hit the deck the horizontal was really big. When it went supersonic the nose down pitch was awesome. We eventually put what was called a High Speed Trimmer on it. The HST was a canard that fit on the side of each engine inlet. At low speeds it would be folded down and flush with the side of the inlet. At high speeds it would extend and be flush with the top of the engine inlet and shifted the NP forward enough that the beast could be turned. Needless to say that design was not a winner either.

There are times when aero types don't know when to call uncle.