ORIGINAL: HighPlains
Like elliptical wings
It's not so much that elliptically shaped wing planforms are so efficient, but rather having an elliptical distribution of lift.
Okay, I'll try this then:
"Like elliptical or other wing planforms designed to produce an elliptical lift distribution, for example a semi-ellipse, or many high performance airfoils at lower Rn,.." (Edit: the airfoil part being a separate thought and nothing to do with ellipses but I wrote that a bit unclearly)
The point being that an elliptical wing, being an ellipse and undoubtedly chosen by the designer because of its favorable elliptical lift distribution, will only be advantageous if attention is paid to details such as the local cross section at difficult to reproduce areas such as the wing tips where the chord diminishes to zero. Otherwise, the performance errors induced by the local discrepancies that inevitably result when difficult to reproduce articles are fabricated with anything less than the equipment needed to do the job with sufficient accuracy, such as CNC machines, may cumulatively be of sufficient magnitude to overshadow any benefits that would otherwise be evident.
[sm=spinnyeyes.gif]
Darnit, I stopped housecleaning again..
MJD
p.s. I'm just having fun..