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Terry, I believe this was done to Steve Barnards plane, n157st.
Steve only flew a short time with the root fairings, and then removed them. At the time, he had the fastest 6a, Tracy Salor had the fastest 6, and of course Dave Anders with his 4 was the fastest RV. This was in the "golden" years of CAFE competition. |
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"Why it goes so fast" is a really interesting story, his discussions on the nozzle effect are very good. |
I have been reading Kelly Johnson's autobiography "More Than My Share of It All." He was trying to correct a directional instability problem on the Lockheed model 10 Electra. One of the fixes was "we removed the wing fillets, or fairings onto the fuselage--put on apparently because they were coming into style and being used successfully on such airplanes as the Douglas DC-1."
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Me too.
I would also be interested in something other than the standard rubber fairings. Not trying to go faster (tho that would be OK) but trying to find something that won't break away at the most inopportune times. You wouldn't believe the racket that a flailing rubber fairing makes when it separates at 200+ knots!
I suppose I could lay up some composite fairings but there must be someone who has already done the work. Anybody? |
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Haha, same thing happened to me. (170kts though). Coming out of a loop one of the rubbers popped out and made a horrible noise. It's amazing how calmly you get the airplane straight, level and slowed down before trouble shooting those noises. Back to the thread topic.... The Speed with Economy book talks in length about how any angle less than 90 needs to have a radiused fairing. Our wings meet the fuse with less than 90 because of dihedral. I haven't tested but I have heard 20 people say 20 different things. |
Get rid of them
On my first RV6 I had molded wing root fairings. They looked really nice. My friend(guru) who has won more awards for RV construction and speeds than most, took one look and told me to get rid of them and put it back to Van's design. I did speed test and GAINED 8 KNOTS by going back to the original design.(Read my article on speed mods) I just might mention that gaining speed in the air by reducing drag means a difference in amount of fuel used at a given RPM. I happen to think that is an important benefit to having a slicker airplane. Also I might mention that if the distance between the fairing and the fuselage is the required 1/8 inch, the rubber will not come out at 17 knots. I'll prove that to anybody who wants to go for a ride with me.
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Not too many of us going purposefully over 200kts (Smokey). I would find out what extrusion supplier Van's is using for that part. My guess is that it is a standard product. With the thousands of extrusions out there, if you where able to find one with a deeper cut or overlap and perhaps slightly thicker and/or stiffer, it might just work. That would be a relatively easy "fix".
Another idea, and one I am not a big fan of, would be to glue the extrusion on. This has been tried with mostly bad results. However, if you where to just glue a few inches of each end, perhaps it would keep the thing from un-zipping? |
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Evo style fairings on RV-8
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I'd be interested in hearing from anyone actually flying with the Evo style fairings on their RV-8. Very much like the look, just wondering about flight characteristic impact (aside from a possible speed penalty.) Thanks - Another Mark... |
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