Beepee,

There is a group that puts on a marathon event in the desert out here. Basically how far can you fly on a certain amount of gas. Fun stuff. Like you say, having a wide speed capability is very useful for following a car. They run their course along a closed circuit, and there is always strong wind in the desert in the afternoon. It’s very nice if the plane can handle car speed +/- wind speed. Their course also involves a few thousand feet of altitude change that plays heck with the mixture settings. Very challenging. How is your event structured, what is the goal?

As I mentioned in my post above, try split flaps sometime. They are really great.

I did fly my seaplane from a friends boat on the ocean one time. We flew it alongside the boat for about an hour and a half covering about 40 miles following the coast line. That was a kick. I would like to do a good cross country flight someday. Don’t have any idea what or how though?

Multiflyer