When the subject of retractable gear comes up I always suspected that
perhaps the best way to go would be to retract the nose gear and
leave the main gear down and very well faired. This would be a
combination that would be low drag and not too complicated. A lot of
the drag of a fixed gear is coming from that nose gear which disrupts
the accelerated air from the prop. In the CAFE races at San Jose CA,
a Cessna 150 did extremely well with little modification except
around the nose gear which looked as if it had been padded for a
really cold winter. Look to Rutan's VeryEasy for ideas of a simple
retract mechanism for the nose gear. Same thing for the Mooneys
with the manual gear. John Milland
