Vrftsjtryk

There's a one word russian slang for a design philosophy that translates as " working with a piece of paper on your knee". I remember it loosely as ' nakayanki '. Can someone enlighten?

It's на коленке - 'to make something crudely, without using any fancy tools', a botch job.

It's not specific to aviation.

Could that be 'сделано на коленке'='made on a knee'? This is said when some result was made paying less time to the process and having lower quality potential. Like if you you could not (or felt lazy to) use table, but used your knee as the only fulcrum. The phrase can be used not only to underline low quality of some thing, but also in informal speech, when you mark that some good result was achieved in terrible development enviroment or that some job took surprisingly low time and effort. The phrase is quite expressive, so it is appliable nearly only to informal speech.

As you can guess, 'сделано/написано'='done/written' - both appliable, depends on context (doing or writing). But you definitely can't use 'придумано,изучено,прочитано...'='devised,explored,read...' - the action requires table that can be replaced by a knee in extreme conditions.

Let's make some examples:

- Ужасные инструменты, всё сделано на коленке!

- These instruments are terrible, all is done on a knee!

- Ты сделал домашнее задание? Дашь списать?

- Сделал, но лучше поищи другое - я был занят вчера и своё домашнее задание сделал только что на коленке

- Did you do hometask? Can you give it to me to write it off?

- I did, but for you it would be better to find another one - I was busy yesterday and have done my hometask just now on a knee

- В момент основания института финансирование было очень мало, поэтому первые лабораторные установки были собраны на коленке самими студентами

- When the institute was founded, the financing was very low, so students made the first laboratory equipment themselves on a knee

- Они заклеивают крыло скотчем! Неужели весь самолёт был сделан на коленке?

- They are sticking the adhesive tape on a wing! The whole airplane was made on a knee, indeed!