Mark; One suggestion is to look at what the pros do to pick up efficiency and reduce drag. When you have a little free time, look at LoPresti Speed Merchants' products, for example. They sell stuff for high-end fast airplanes to make them faster, and you might be able to learn from what they have obviously spent a lot of time and money designing. Langford was definitely onto something with the drag reduction due to the cowl air inlet 'right-sizing', and that remains a fairly fertile field both from a cooling air drag as well as a prop efficiency standpoint. The windshield/top cowling area may also have some possibilities. Ditto with the air outlet from the cowl at the exhaust outlet area. For that matter, the people at Power-Flow have made a booming business out of increasing performance with bolt-on exhaust systems and maybe you have some horses penned up in your exhaust somewhere.
Or you could always borrow some of Langford's tufting materials, tape them all over the place, and just study what the air is doing as it passes over your airplane's surfaces. And I'll bet if you would close your mouth from its normal YEEEHAAAWWWW!! position into a more streamlined shape, you'd pick up a couple MPH in drag ;o) Oscar Zuniga San Antonio, TX mailto: taildr...@hotmail.com website at http://www.flysquirrel.net
