Quote:
Originally Posted by hat_man
I don't really have a dog in this fight. 99% of the "brain trust" here is leaps and bounds ahead of me when it comes to the technical stuff, but a statement like this is just "trumpet blowing" IMO.
Julian, I am convinced you are an intelligent person. I have watched your videos (admittedly not all of them) and read some of your posts and can see you are no crackpot. A little egotistical at times, but aren't we all to some extent.
Why should you write a Wiki when you have written a book? Maybe so you can share your knowledge with the rest of us lowly aerodynamically challenged "commoners". The information here at EM has been shared freely and no one has ever (to my knowledge) "profited" from giving knowledge to the collective, except in a moral sense. While most of the folks that post here are hig IQ (especailly in this sub-forum) the Wiki area is visited by folks that are looking at trying something and experimenting with a new idea and reporting back to the collective as to how it worked. Most of our DIY home-built "improvements" I'm sure would fail by your standards, but still work. Not perfectly, but they still work. There is something to be said about "Something is better than nothing." But I'm sure you will point out that I am wrong and there are examples (you'll have pictures no doubt) showing that I am wrong. But if a "mod" gives a partial gain then IT IS better than nothing even if it doesn't fit the "template" perfectly or the math isn't perfect.
Write a few Wiki's and let people learn from you. Let the "modder" choose which direction he wants to go rather tell us how we're all "doing it wrong". Your YT videos are free and you take the time to put them together. There is no disclaimer at the beginning that says "You should be happy your getting this for free because I wrote a book that covers all of this." Why not do that here? Personally I have benefited from the mass of information here and even though my crappy little truck is an aero-brick according to your standards, I'm at 7+ mpg over EPA and climbing. That's the reason we are all here. Not to FLAUNT our intelligence to the collective, but to SHARE that same intelligence for the benefit of the collective. Sometimes I think you have a hard time seeing that.
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It's not 'trumpet blowing' to say I have written a book on the topic. It's a statement of reality. If I have already written all that I know about the topic in 100,000+ words and 400+ pics, why would I waste my time doing it all over again?
I do the videos only to promote the books. No more, no less. In fact, at the moment I have stopped doing them because Covid has depressed book sales so much it's not worth my time doing the videos.
I honestly don't understand the philosophy that poor advice is better than none. Why not instead aim for good advice? And why this idea that information that is clearly and demonstrably wrong should not be challenged? I've seen that also in other discussion groups and it strikes me as ludicrous: that because we shouldn't rock the boat, we shouldn't call out stuff that people write which is completely wrong. Not just a bit deceptive, but outright wrong.
I've never said that 'the template' is not a low drag shape: I'd imagine it is. But the way that idea has been extrapolated to purport to give guidance to the height of rear spoilers, to guide the shape of car extensions, to be used as some kind of benchmark when judging the aero of existing cars - all are just rubbish. But it gets worse, because the template has then (apparently) fed into Aerohead's weird theory that flow will not stay attached if the shape curves downwards more quickly than the template - and in turn that has led (apparently) to his completely wrong theory on how lift occurs on modern cars.
It's a skyscraper built on a base of sand, and it has resulted in massive misunderstandings that can be seen across almost all aero topics on this group.