Comment

Comment by Ari Hulkkonen on August 14, 2014 at 4:09pm

I noticed the fairings too. We had experimental fairings for about a year but removed them as we sandblasted all steel parts and painted them in June. The next step is to go for aluminum streamlined tubing. Our old struts are not made of thin wall 4130 and they're heavy too. But I'm still struggling to get the tubing..

Based on my initial calculations a gain of 5mph should be realistic. 7mph or more is great! Streamlining the landing gear and horizontal tail attachments might give a mile or two more.  Slats would give an other 5..7mph too (I've tested this). Saving a liter or two per hour is even more important than gaining some speed although these go hand-in-hand, of course.

Comment by John Marzulli on August 13, 2014 at 10:25pm

The strut fairings were worth about 7MPH.

Comment by Shawn Magin on August 13, 2014 at 5:13pm

Hey, how much did you gain with strut fairings?