Quote Originally Posted by WESTERNAERO View Post
I don't know Jerry, maybe it's just me, but I don't find this stuff that difficult to understand. I would like to see some basic principals laid out as rules to start with. There's fine tuning with everything I just don't understand why the basics can't be said.
That 1" per foot of hull that Bob Teague told me sure isn't that hard to understand. It's funny that he was the only one who said that though after asking multiple people for a couple months. After asking a few why on my boat the strut should be 20-23"'s I never got a definitive answer as to why. It was always, well that's what everyone says or does. Come on man, LOL, that's just craziness. You've put up some really good history of these old boats, it's a very nice little library you've made here. So why can we have a library of info on how these things actually work, and work right?
I know exactly what you are saying. I come from an aviation background and fluid dynamics and aerodynamics are pretty much the same. So I would ask what GC makes the boat carry properly? Or how much thrust does the prop need to produce before moving the engine forward or aft is required to balance the boat? Guess what answers I got. The people building them aren't fluid dynamic engineers, they are boat racers. They race in a class that pays jack squat for prize money. Most racers have more time than money and there isn't a lot of spare time when you own a race boat, so figure that is true about money to pay some engineer to analyze why your boat does or doesn't work. Most of the current designs are copies of someone else's design that happened to work. There were no teams of engineers calculating the lift of the hull if they do this or that, there were no water/wind tunnels to test new designs in prior to building it. A manufacturer built it, rigged it and raced it. If it worked well, someone else splashed it and made just enough changes to call it something else.

You were given a basic formula for strut location on a cruiser. That's like me giving you suspension configuration on a station wagon and you wondering why the same formula won't work on a Viper. Cruisers aren't ragged edge race boats generally (GN boats being the exception). But in the formula did he say if that distance was from the back of the plates or the back of the transom? Putting plates on the boat will change everything if you are looking to go fast. Ask how many ill handling cruisers have been seen and you'll get an idea of just how much more there is than just where the strut goes. But where the strut goes and at what angle it is at, is the basis for the entire build.

I have found when you want to know how to set up a boat, ask questions and give a lot of detailed response as to what you have and what you want to do with it. Someone will usually be able to tell you what they have seen or know to work in the past. That gives you a starting point. Once it is working and displays what issues it does or doesn't have, then adjustments can be made to correct it and make it handle the way it should.

Some day, I hope to be able to document what effects different changes generate on my boats. If it becomes something that is repeatable on other boats, we may wind up with some magic formula like you are asking for. But, like most, I don't have the time nor the resources to worry about that right now.