REFLECTOR: Wheel Pants and speed?

Mon Sep 19 19:48:46 CDT 2011

Kevin, 

I am not yet flying my V. Close though..... I hope. 

There is a guy in our airpark that is a retired flight test engineer (theoretical type). He and his wife have built at least 12 homebuilts... and still have every one of them. 

We were hangar talking about my plans and my airplane and I was mentioning that I "may" go with VGs on my V... but I wasn't sure. I didn't want to have to deal with installation, cleaning, maintenance, etc if I didn't need them. He is pretty realistic when it comes to theory versus reality and a pretty sharp guy. One of the few "definitive" statements that he has made is that I should definitely put the VGs on. He said that in all his actual flight testing, specially on canards, the VG are a proven method of lowering the landing speed without much (if any) top end penalty. 

That's not really what I wanted to hear, as I don't have anything against VGs in principal, but didn't want the look, maintenance, install...etc right off the bat if I didn't need them. 

So, I believe I will be putting the VGs on my bird.  

Thought I would share. 

Kurt Winker

-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Baker <flykb at verizon.net>
To: reflector <reflector at tvbf.org>
Sent: Mon, Sep 19, 2011 2:09 pm
Subject: Re: REFLECTOR: Wheel Pants and speed?

              I wanted to thank everyone for all the great information and passing    on the wealth of knowledge you have gained to the rest of us.
    I really appreciate it.
    VG here I come :-)

    Kevin 

    On 9/19/2011 5:01 PM, Brett Ferrell wrote:    

Bob,

Yes, we installed them on our fixed gear X, land really like        them.  They're certainly not required, but we weren't        happy with how sluggish the ailerons were on landing.  The        factory teaches to use the rudders to bring up a low wing on        landing, but the VGs make the ailerons much more responsive so        that you don't necessarily have to.        

They seemed to lower our stall speed by about 5 knots, and          may have taken a knot off of the top end (again, we haven't          been really good at checking the absolute top end, but it was          about a knot from where we typically maxed out).

Fences would probably also work, but a local 'long wing'          flyer has those, and likes them, but he says that they work          sooo well that the plane wants to fly straight (it takes a          fair amount of input to initiate a turn).  Since we got most          of what we wanted with the VGs, I haven't elected to install          the fences, though I made some off of the templates that I got          from Chris Martin's plane (Klaus Savier worked with him to get          those sized for the Velocity).

VG Flight Summary - http://www.velocityxl.com/content.php?1432-Flying-with-Vortex-Generators

Video -                    http://www.velocityxl.com/media.php?do=details&mid=85

CCI - Where we bought ours http://abianconi.hypermart.net/Vortex.htm

Installation -             http://www.velocityxl.com/content.php?1429-Installing-the-Vortex-Generators-on-Wings

Brett

> Anyone with experience with VG's on an XL?
        > 
        > Bob Wood        
> Sent from my iPad

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