TELEDYNMCS(at)aol.com
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 Posted: Wed Sep 10, 2008 4:37 am Post subject: Return air vents and nose gear holes |
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Hello Fran and all,
I installed "Ultimate Ventilators" below my panel in N245E where the Europa supplied NACA vents would normally go. I love 'em! You get a nice blast of air from them both on the ground and in the air. I also have 3 "eyeball" vents installed in my overhead panel which are fed from a NACA vent installed on the right side of the vertical fin. The eyeball vents work very well at flight speeds, but don't offer much on the ground. Well worth the effort for cooling things off in flight here in the SE USA, though.
I used one of these http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=5228&cs=1 for my return air vent. I used the oval shaped one shown on this page. Mine is mounted in the lower part of the "D" panel. It looks nice, too.
FWIW, LS, a major German glider manufacturer, recently released a return air modification designed to be used on their gliders that adds 2 full (measured) glide points in performance. This increase in performance is achieved because of the drag reduction this mod provides by channeling the exiting airflow from the cockpit through a low drag plenum. Haven't seen one yet, but one of our customers has ordered the mod and intends on having us install it once it arrives. Once I figure out what they are doing I'll report it to the group. My guess is they capture the air exiting the cockpit and duct it to exit the fuselage at a point where the air is disturbed (like at the wing root or near the tail wheel) This is a fairly common arrangement on racing sailplanes for reducing the overall drag picture. Apparently, allowing the cockpit air to find it's way out through the tail boom causes a lot of drag because of all the various bulkheads and assorted hardware it must pass through along the way.
Regarding what Bud said about the nose gear hole, I built a removable fireproof bulkhead in my tunnel, aft of the nose gear hole, to allow the nose gear hole to be used for exit cooling flow as Bud describes. I'm running a Jabiru 3300 (not exactly known for being a cool running engine) and I've not had the issues others have had with cooling the Jab. The main issues with cooling I've had have had more to do with cooling balance from one side of the engine to the other, but I've got that sorted out now thanks to a variety of changes I've made in Jabiru's stock cooling set up. Even with the nose gear hole and a fixed pitch prop, I, too, can rip along at 140+ kts if I choose to do so.
I sure hated to miss Rough River this year. I've been fighting a nasty ear infection for the past week. I seem to be on the mend now (finally) and I hope to be back in the air by the weekend.
Regards,
John Lawton
Whitwell, TN (TN89)
N245E - Flying
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