Quote Originally Posted by av8rps View Post

Here's the million dollar question? Did you think your speed mods were worth the effort?

Paul
Paul,
Thinking about how to respond to the comments, the above quote sort of leads into my thoughts. I have an addiction, I must confess. I am a garage rat, tinkerer, tool guy, or whatever other moniker can be used for a guy who is always in the Hangar - Shop - or if not there, trying to think of one more thing to do. The pic is my first real project other than the push carts as a kid. Yes it works. It is .25 Cal. as that was the largest drill bit my dad had in his toolbox.

Deringer.jpg

So in that sense, yes they were worth the effort. But in a practical sense, I don't really know. Sadly, my current Model IV hasn't been flown very much since Phase I. My initial intent for the mods was to hopefully keep up with the buddies who mostly went to the ULS while I stuck to the 80 HP UL in the Kitfox that was to replace the one destroyed in 2007 with my emergency landing. During the time I was building N338S One of the guys got married and quit flying, another sold his IV, another went to a Glastar which sort of paced him out of the group. This resulting in the group sort of vanishing. The side by side flights were gone.

I have not played with prop pitch since first flight. My airspeed at 5500 rpm at about 2000 ft. is about 105 mph. I can climb from our 1300 ft. strip here at 1500 fpm. so I could play with the prop and likely get a few more mph without compromising too much in climb. I do have cabane gear with fairings on the gear legs and have wanted to fair in the cabane and spring struts. The plan has been to have them rotate as was suggested in a previous post.

Being the tinkerer, I have been thinking for a long time about wheel pants. I have the Nankang tires and have thought of something like what we see on the Ercoupe - a fairly tight fitting cone behind the wheel. I still need to use the tire surface as my step to get in and out of the airplane and this would work to keep the tire surface uncovered. With that would be hubcaps similar to what I had on the first IV,but an integral part of the Pants on this one. With the pants and a faired cabane, I might get a bit more speed.

I also took a look at the wing to fuselage junction and am going to play with that as well. When I decided to build in 1992 it just opened so many doors.