Muktuk
Muktuk
is a nourishing delicacy of the Canadian North (make
sure you write down this recipe): Take the outer covering
of the whale. Peel off the white skin, approximately
1-2 inches thick, plus a thin pinkish layer immediately
underneath. After taking blocks from the whale, leave
2 days hanging to dry. Cut into pieces 6 x 6 inches.
Have water ready to boil. Cook until it tests tender
when pierced with a fork. Keep in oil in a 45 gallon
drum after it is cooled. Store in a cool place and you
will have muktuk all year. (Most Inuit prefer to eat
muktuk raw, as it has tender-crisp texture and tastes
like fresh coconut)
Mach
Tuck
Mach
tuck, on the other hand is quite a different kettle
of fish. (Now a here's a recipe for you high flyers
out there) Mach tuck is something that happens to you.
As you approach the speed of sound (even as low as Mach
.85) in your (particularly high performing) home built
you may find your nose starting to droop! Now this may
not seem such a bad thing, for all of you out there
forever in pursuit of going faster, but the story can
quickly get worse. The initial droop is caused by the
center of pressure moving aft on your wing as a result
of the air stream over the top of the wing being accelerated
to supersonic speeds, even though the overall speed
of the aircraft is still sub sonic. Now as a well-trained
pilot, you would naturally come back a little on the
stick to level things out, but oh, like all things in
life, things don't always go quite as we have come to
expect and hope. At these speeds the upward deflection
of the elevator has been known to cause a shock wave
stall at the elevator hinge line, which of course is
really bad news as your goal is to increase lift to
counter that nasty droop, not decrease it. As the speed
increases, the aircraft goes into an ever-increasing
downward pitch - a condition known to WW II pilots as
a "compressibility dive".
Well
as you can imagine, the rest of the recipe is fairly
well known. Can't imagine a more exciting way to spend
a Sunday afternoon! So if you had to choose, which one
would it be I wonder. Preferring, as I do, the more
pedestrian speeds of my modest wee wooden aircraft,
Mack Tuck seems even more remote now than an evening
dining on Muktuk. And Muktuk I have experienced, Mach
Tuck I have not. Better the devil I knowÖÖ (I am much
indebted to Barnaby Wainfan for his article on Mach
effects in the March 2001 issue of Kitplanes; Muktuk
recipe - author unknown).
