Barnaby Wainfan
Barnaby is a Technical Fellow for Northrop Grumman’s Advanced Design organization. A private pilot with single-engine and glider ratings, Barnaby has been involved in the design of unconventional airplanes including canards, joined wings, flying wings and some too strange to fall into any known category.
Wind Tunnel
Taxi testing may seem to be a mere formality, but it is a vital step toward bringing a new aircraft to flight, and is not without its dangers.
Wind Tunnel
Taking off in an aircraft would seem to be a fairly simple, straightforward maneuver. But in fact it’s complicated, and a combination of factors must be just right for it to work.
Wind Tunnel
Learn how wingtip vortices are generated and how wake turbulence can affect your aircraft.
The STOL Equation
Barnaby Wainfan explains the challenges designers face in creating viable STOL aircraft.
Wind Tunnel
The way lift is distributed along a wing's span affects both the structure and its aerodynamics.
Understanding and Avoiding Spins
A pilots ability to recover from a spin depends just as much on the design characteristics of the airplane as on stick-and-rudder skills.
Interference Drag Adds Up
Barnaby Wainfan explains the role of properly designed wing-fuselage junctions in reducing interference drag.
Wind Tunnel
Barnaby Wainfan examines the design factors that can mitigate damage in an accident and increase the chances of survival.
Wind Tunnel
Its easy to get carried away with new systems and technology that promise to make your airplane faster, smarter and even safer. But sometimes more is just more.
Wind Tunnel
Involved in the flight testing of a friends aircraft, Barnaby Wainfan contemplates the consequences (and wisdom) of designing an aircraft around an engine that may prove unsatisfactory or, worse, unavailable.
In Case You Missed It
Flush Rivet Removal
There can be more than 10,000 rivets in an aluminum kit aircraft. Given that many opportunities for errors, you’ll surely need to replace a few.
Lightweight D-Sub Connectors
Working on wiring recently, I became concerned about the weight of all the...
![[Credit: Mike Davenport]](https://www.kitplanes.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/DSC_0053.jpg?w=324&h=160&crop=1 "Pre-War Porterfield")