Re: The Griffon engine
Intuition and experience could be good but not all of them had it despite thinking they did. I think quite a lot of the intuition was in fact relying on standard tables and nomographs. I still have a 1954 Machinery's, amazing stuff. Some of the old guys I worked with (of a later generation) would take Machinery's and go up a step "for luck". Adding mass is all very well but adding rotational inertia can be completely counter productive.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
