Agreed, the man is an orchestra director. Clear, to the point, not a single word or gesture wasted.

Today with analog-digital interfaces you could create a three dimensional picture of all the Accelerometers - back then you didn't even have an electronic calculator - one needed more in depth knowledge, experience AND imagination to solve problems. But of course top-notch engineering today is far more demanding because the problems to solve are many more in a far wider field - it's like a huge pyramid whose foundation rests in the past - many are totally unaware of this until it's gone when they realize that they have lost everything - and bringing it back will cost them mountains of effort and money !

@@TPath3 truer words have not been spoken.

@@TPath3 I think you missed the entire point of the comment... I would be curious as to any actual physical aptitude that you possess equivalent to diagnosing and solving any of these problems without using computers? In 50 years you will be irrelevantly replaced by the latest software package upgrade compared to Leon's trailblazing craft and his lifetime contribution to it's advancement. What will you ever do besides praise technology over human technical engineering capabilities while leaving no legacy for yourself? In an indirect way, you are part of the problem, considering you and your laptop think you already know everything... but would have no clue as to actually solving any real problem on your own because you have no deep hands-on experience, relevant human insight or ability to physically build, test, experiment and improve anything in the real world on his level. People's lives depended on his work constantly in a field that he essentially developed with his peers. I'd chose one Leon over 20 of you techies any day. That old man would have smoked you.

Curtis is getting his own video, coming up in next few weeks.

Flying wire vibration is a fun thing to watch in an agcat, it usually stops when you land.

Have to know the right frequencies Juan ;-), the exact science (with slide rulers not depicted here) goes over my head as well (but interesting old-school education never-the-less..). Best wishes to you & family to get some much needed precipitation your way.

I had a thought that perhaps in the early days of aviation, they only thought in terms of symmetrical movement of wing components, and didn’t happen onto the concept of torsional movement as a failure point. It was unlikely that they could retrieve enough wreckage to know what failure took place in a crash, and if the plane DIDN’T crash, they likely took that as a sign that all was well. That’s likely oversimplifying, but it’s what I thought.

I sure hope Leon is teaching you this magic.

@@flyingroark I somehow think that Kermit Weeks is not one to fall for assorted forms of “snake oil”. Is it not also possible that all of the things you listed are minor players in the big picture, that the issue they are chasing shows itself regardless?

@@flyingroark Could be. I consider the number of times that someone decided to simply jump from the theoretical/virtual world straight to cold hard reality, and discovered something vital that they either missed or didn’t account for, with disastrous results. Sort of like how a fossil with a decent multimeter finds the issue that technology was fooled by. If you were paying attention, you would have heard them say that they weren’t willing to destroy the essential essence of the aircraft by trying to fix something that would only appear at near limits of performance. It DID result in some sober consideration of priorities, which is likely just as useful in the end.

Not many people understand it. In this case the trick is inducing artifical flutter into the plane and then measuring it. They don't explain exactly how to correct it.

@@JoeLinux2000 They actually did: adding counter weight which they said they were not going to do to preserve the integrity of this relic. Kermit mentions flying it below 200Mph or Knots can't remember. In any case Kermit is of the few who could but shouldn't fly this thing for the same reason.

Did they change their mind about external aileron balances before deciding to do nothing?

@@givenfirstnamefamilyfirstn3935 Kermit mentioned something like a detachable counter weight so it can be removed for display. Honestly I would not fly that airplane even for million dollars. I appreciate the machine, the effort the people that made it put in and the extreme it was taken to back in the days but, I would leave it there for people to admire. As a perfectionist I have learned that 99% when repairing something is good enough to survive another day. My humble opinion.