Tracy Crook wrote:

SNIP

In general, I have a lot of work to do on drag reduction.  I was talking

to

a local RV-6 builder who has the second fastest RV-6 at 238 MPH (behind
Tracy Sailor) and got some interesting insights.  When I asked him how

he

learned the best way to improve drag, he told me the best thing he

learned

was to ignore the aeronautical sacred cows and start looking at the
airplanes that go fast (he goes to all the Reno races).  As an example,

he

pointed out his wing intersection fairings.  He doesn't have any, just a
flush fit with a tiny rubber gap seal.  My plane has large wing

intersection

fairings designed using the results of some NACA study on intersection

drag.

They look cool but he said if I wanted to go fast I should remove them.

I'm

going to try this and a bunch of other things he pointed out.

Tracy Crook
rws@altavista.net
www.rotaryaviation.com

I am very happy Tracy is finally getting serious about drag reduction.
We have had much discussion on this issue over the years and I think we
have learned a lot. Since cooling drag can be up to 50% of total drag we 
shall see what he comes up with vis a vi his radiator configuration. 
It is going to be interesting :-) This is the first column on the first page in
Hoerner's chapter on this subject. This will give a little background
for future discussion. I hope Ray Richardson at Power Sport soon gets 
serious about this too.

Paul Lamar
 
The AirCraft Rotary Engine NewsLetter.              Powered by Linux.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            http://www.linux.org