Founder, Narrfoil LLC. (Retired)
A.S. Eng 1969, Kilgore Junior College
B.S. ASE 1972, The University of Texas at Austin
M.S. ASE 1973, The University of Texas at Austin
When Jimmy Narramore was a toddler he was inspired by his father who built and flew a balsa wood control line model of the Texaco Sky Chief aircraft and who was the song leader at church. These experiences along with the advent of digital computers created a passion in Jimmy for both computational aerodynamic technology and eventually Christian worship music. During his engineering career, Jimmy was a pioneer in the application of computational fluid dynamics to rotorcraft design and analysis. Although Jimmy has retired from engineering, he still plays electric guitar in his church’s worship band and enjoys his grandsons and family time.
Narramore was valedictorian of his graduating class at Kilgore Junior College. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin.
Narramore’s professional career began in 1973 with McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company’s High Lift Technology Development Group in Long Beach, California. Leaving DAC in 1975, he joined Cessna Aircraft Company’s Pawnee Division Advance Design Group in Wichita, Kansas. From 1979-2012, Narramore was in the Flight Technology Department of Bell Helicopter Textron where he eventually became Chief of Aerodynamics and Acoustics and an Associate Technical Fellow. After retiring from Bell in 2013, he initiated NARRFOIL LLC and was an independent computational aerodynamics consultant until 2017 when he closed this company.
Throughout his career, Narramore was an advocate for the application of computational methods to aerodynamics. This started with simple potential flow methods and over time became full 3-D Navier-Stokes solution methods. At Bell Helicopter, Jimmy also developed the Aerodynamics Analysis for Quality Assurance (AA4QA) method which revolutionized Bell’s rotor quality assurance operation. He developed technology to store and find documents called the Aerodynamic Information Repository (AIR). During his career at Bell, Narramore created and continuously improved an Aerodynamic Design and Analysis (ADAM) information system to visualize and automate many of the aerodynamic functions including input to codes and interface with other systems.
Narramore has proudly supported ASE/EM student projects as well as attending ASE/EM Fall Festivals to interact with students who are working on the projects. He has been awarded nine separate patents by the US Patent Office. In 2013, Narramore accepted the American Helicopter Society Technical Fellow Award. He has written over 60 peer reviewed papers during his career and received the American Helicopter Society Forum 55 Best Paper Award in 1999.
Narramore lives in Austin, Texas with his wife, Debbie. He enjoys spending time with daughter, Keri, son-in-law, Rob, their two children, Corban and Elliott and he enjoys in serving at his church.
