RE: Fairings at the wing root
Bruce,
It is mostly for looks, I know that the overall reduction of drag probably will not be all that much of a change, with the exception of the support wires on the tail. I am not looking for high speed performance, I have a one of Mike Connors' "Screamin Demons" for a high speed bird, just cleaning up the plane a bit. I had hoped that just increasing the AOA of the faring at the wing root would not cause degrading of the overall performance. I intend to use a 3/4 inch radius on the farings from the wing to the fuse.
I had also thought about adding horner style wingtips, perhaps not that good of a idea...
It's just that those big blunt wingtips do not look all that great, perhaps a better idea is just to make them tapered and leave it at that.
I have started a posting in the kit build forum but have not added to it yet, as I am trying to work out all the details of changes I hope to make. Among the changes planned in addition to those above, Adding 10-15% more rudder area and where the wings will have the wingtips added to the span I wanted to enlarge the horizontal stab and elevator by the same percentage as I am adding to the wing area.
I had thought about cutting down the ailerons at the root and adding flaps, I am not all that concerned about roll response that I will lose by doing this. I also am going to add hard points to the fuse so I could add payloads or weight to the finished airplane. I hope to use this plane as a warbird trainer it has been a long time since I had flow a plane with high wing loading and by adding weight at the COG I could vary the wing loading to get the feel of flying a warbird again without trashing one in the process...
The main reason I had considered mounting the engine inverted within a full cowl and it would be very easy to make the exhaust for the hot air under the main fuse behind the cowl. This exhaust would end right about the LE of the wing, this will add more side area ahead of the COG and should enhance the Knife Edge performance...
After looking through the manual and at the plans again I am trying to figure out where I gotten the idea that the wing had washout....