On May 26, 2009, at 9:00 PM, krnet-requ...@mylist.net wrote: >> I feel like the decreased width of the airplane will benefit in >> making >> it as slippery as possible.
Regarding tandem vs side by side design and drag. In the late seventies I was a member of a design group that was a spin off from the local EAA chapter in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles. This group of about 30 persons was almost exclusively composed of working engineers in the local aeronautical industry (Lockeed Rocketdyne, Douglas, etc etc) The group decided to hold a contest for a wide bodied design with the grand prize being something like pie and coffee at Dennys. You can see we were big spenders. A major surprise that appeared to many of the engineer designers was the small amount of drag increase with the wide bodies. As a group they had expected large increases of drag as a penalty for the comfort of that extra space where in fact the increased drag was surprisingly little. John Milland
