I forgot to mention in my email of how I attached the gap seals what I thought they actually did. I was hoping for many improvements. However, the only one I could actually tell a difference in was at landing. I always felt there was more aileron control and a lower stall speed. Otherwise, I didn't think they did anything else. Nice to hear the actual data supports these "feelings."
Jim Faughn 891JF -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark Langford Sent: Friday, May 05, 2006 10:16 PM To: KRnet Subject: KR> flying NetHeads, I've been doing a little bit of flying myself. Considering we were surrounded by thunderstorms, yesterday was a pretty smooth flying day. I got in about 3 hours, first doing climbs, glides, and stalls, then adding gap seals and repeating the process. Bottom line is that I could tell no appreciable difference in climb rate (and I have some pretty accurate data, gathered while maintaining 95mph in each climb, plus or minus a mph or two either way). Stall speed might have dropped a mph or two. Top speed appears to have improved slightly. I'll have to dig up the E6B to find out exactly how much, but it's not much. I attribute this to the care I exercised fairing the ailerons and split flaps into the wing (details near the bottom of http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/owings.html ). Building ailerons per the plans yields a big fat gap at the bottom and that begs for gap seals. One odd thing is that the stalls are now preceeded by some noticeable buffeting, which is new, and I'd swear it climbs with less fuselage angle and lands easier (I greased about 5 in a row at FYM), but these are probably my imagination. I'm up to 519 KR "landings" (and still only on the second set of tires!) and 210.9 hours of KR time (sorry, Larry). Maybe I'll get some more in tomorrow, as I plan to buzz up to MRC to visit Troy Petteway, a 20 minute flight... Mark Langford, Harvest, AL see homebuilt airplane at http://www.N56ML.com email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net _______________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at http://www.maddyhome.com/krsrch/index.jsp to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to [email protected] please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html
