Martin H. Eastburn wrote:

NASA used the wind tunnels as well as most aircraft makers. That is a BIG one!

It sure is. One day I accompanied some journeymen to weld
patches over some holes in the tubes housing the motors for
the 40x80. There's a large concrete structure at the north
end of the motor section. I got tasked with dragging the
welding cable up the ladder up the side of that structure.
Started off easy, but man, I was wondering if that damned
cable wasn't going to pull me off before I reached the top!
Don't know how high it is, but it's probably equal to at
least a 6 story building. I got right up to the edge of the
concrete on the west side and looked straight down. I was on
my belly, and getting dizzy at that. One of the journeymen,
a real old-school type, walks up, hangs his toes over the
edge and leans over, while asking if I was afraid of
heights! Looking at the picture, that 4' or so wide concrete
structure looks mighty narrow.... I've been all through the
40x80, it's really neat inside. Even neater is the scale
room. Before electronic instrumentation, all data was
measured by Toledo scales under the test section. There's
quite a few long levers working on knife edges, connected to
the scales to measure various forces on models mounted
above. IIRC, some read in hundreds of pounds, some to many
thousands of pounds.

I allowed myself to get distracted looking into the
hisotry of Ames. Wanted to see if I could find pictures of
any of the wind tunnel models I worked on. Haven't yet, but
did find a picture of a flying jet, the model for which, I
had worked on.
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-3300/ch8.htm
Scroll down to figure 110, the Boeing Quiet Short Haul
Research Aircraft.
After a year of high school work experience, I actually got
hired as a NASA employee for the summer, and the model for
this was one of the first things I got to work on. I doing
simple stuff, skinning the top of the wings. CRS sheet
screwed to angle iron. Wind tunnel models are pretty
basic... I was in heaven though, air drills for tap drill,
clearance drill and countersink, pneumatic tapping gun, and
power screw driver. I was having so much fun I stayed late.
Journeymen thought I was nuts. LOL... maybe they were right!

I saw the plane pictured on approach to Moffett Field a year
or so after leaving the program. I could readily identify
all the ducting and flaps that had been fabricated for the
model. That was neat.
http://prototype-design.com/images/model.jpg is one model I
worked on that I do have pics of thanks to an engineer on
the project. Far as I know this one never progressed to a
flying aircraft.

Further down the NASA page above, at figure 118, the X-14,
in the fifth row is Ed Vernon. He's the guy that interviewed
the snot nose long hair hippy kid that wanted to work in the
metal shop through a high school program. I well remember
that interview. Ed, in his purple polyester suit, hair
probably slicked down with Brylcream. He clearly disliked me
from the instant he saw me, and I'm sure over my 3 years
there I gave him reason to regret letting me in. But he did
change my life by doing so and I wish I could go back and
thank him....

Jon