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Message
Greetings,
I flew again today,
and ended up proving that my cowl cheek exits alone (66 sq in) will not be
enough for climb, though they may well be enough for cruise. To add a cowl
flap on the bottom, I'd have to leave the radiator low, like it is now, in order
to get enough space over the top of the radiator for an exit. Of course,
this is horrible, since air is coming in the radiator, and out the exit right
next to it. There has to be a better way.
Has anyone here put their
radiator and oil cooler at the air exit of the cowl? I know Powersports
did this, as well as Atkins I think. This would be the absolute
simplest solution to my problems, if it works. The new cowl already has
two beautiful 24 sq in inlets on the front. The radiator and oil
cooler could be moved up to the bottom of the engine mount, making them fit
completely inside the bottom of the new cowl. The cowl cheeks could
be closed up, and faired as Van intended. All I would have to do is make a
large adjustable exit scoop for the bottom of the radiator. In
cruise, this would end up being closed to the point where it would almost
be the same as the stock cowl. In climb, the scoop would be
opened quite a bit more to help airflow. The beauty of this is that the
extra drag would only be around during climb, at relatively low
airspeeds.
Now of course the problem
is the engine and turbo heating the air prior to having it get to the oil
cooler, then radiator. I just have no idea how much it would be heated
though. Can anyone take a swag about how much of a problem this would
be? In other words, how much would the air get heated? I REALLY
could use the new... you-know-what to measure some temps. Is it
November yet :-) I could measure the air coming out of the back of
the radiator/oil cooler now, then measure what comes out of the cowl.
That would give me some idea how much heat is getting added by air flowing over
the engine/turbo.
In other news, I'm hearing
some second hand whining from some of the guys at the airport. They claim
that my plane is loud, and annoying, though no one has really complained.
I had an RV-8 buddy of mine listen today as I flew around, and he said he didn't
see any problem at all. He thinks it isn't really any louder than the
lycomings, but that it's a much different sound (of course). He said it
sounded like a large RC pattern plane with a tuned pipe. BTW,
I'm tired of flying around the airport area. Tomorrow, I fly to
the beach :-)
Cheers,
Rusty (hoping for an early
Christmas present from Tracy)
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