Bazinga
I really should change my personal text
- Joined
- 14 December 2012
- Messages
- 271
- Reaction score
- 362
From Paul Chapman today
Yes....The drawing was done by John Jupe some time after 1984 (because that was when I joined the Westlands FPO). John had been the Head of the FPO previously but was shaking up to retirement so he had some sort of 'special merit' position. Anyway he was, at that time, interested in computer generated perspective drawings and so took this old project scheme and generated the drawing. We shared an office so it was an interesting development to watch and, being in the mid 1980s, rendering and sun positioning for the shadows was a new game. Of course John wrote all the development code himself but that was what we were all doing although my bit was the design optimisation stuff. As for the co-ax....I think it was from the 1970s and before my time. Later on when I became the HoFP I tried to bring the WG projects together into a referenceable file. We had a lot of big drawings but the supporting documentation was pretty scattered and I don't think the project files had survived. At one point in the 1990s there was an edict to shred anything that was not covered by contract so a lot was lost....although I don't like being edicted to so various interesting things like the WG file were preserved. I left Westlands for a sabbatical year at Filton in '97. In fact they asked me to return but when I got back most of the previously saved stuff was gone. Then, four years later, we were shut down and that was that! Maybe the Helicopter Museum at Weston Super Mare has the residue.........
.........I think it must have had a W.G number (Westland Group). We were often a bit lax about the numbering since the FPO was always being pressed. Sometimes something that was a doodle would spring to life for no apparent reason or you might have to generate a range of possible options where one would be much more developed than the others. This was probably the case in respect of John's co-ax as there would likely to have been the co-ax, conventional, stopped rotor and maybe his infamous supersonic rotor all within one research exercise. A lot of our work was linked to supporting new technologies, for example in the 1990s I was mostly working in the +15/20 year timeframe although there would be the odd exercise to support new engineering projects like the Canadian EH101 SAR. And then there were the Future Lynx studies that probably helped to keep things running pre-Wildcat.
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