Terry,
I totally agree w/ your comments on the standard cowl...Did you check
out Bowman's fairing? Alex's cowl of course removes the cooling air
exit from factoring in to potential drag reduction of a main gear
fairing.
Fred
On Thursday, September 20, 2007, at 02:39 PM, Terry Seaver (terrys)
wrote:
> I believe the biggest improvement in reducing drag would be found in
> the engine cowl area.- Closing off the gills would be the first thing
> (they add no value to the plane).- Second would be to clean up the
> radiator opening and following duct, it is too large for the size of
> this engine and is-rather messy.- Then clean up the radiator exit, it
> is very messy back there.- We carefully installed the Kim Prout main
> gear fairings and saw ZERO improvement in cruise speed, which leads me
> to believe that the lower cowl exit is so turbulent that fairing in
> the main gear (or even retracting it) has little value.--A
> magazine-flight test on the Europa motor glider reported that there
> was no improvement in glide performance gear up vs gear down, which
> further supports my suspicion on the cowl problems.
> -
> regards,
> Terry Seaver
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