Cy Galley wrote:

>>It doesn't seem to affect normal flight.<< (regarding installation of
vortex gens.)

Cy, maybe your wing has never achieved laminar flow, for whatever reason. A
bit of roughness or an unfortunately placed paint trim line (doesn't take
much). If this is the case, adding devices that may destroy LF won't make
much diffference, if it's never established in the first place, in the
flight regimes where it is a benefit - such as high speed cruise.

I've related here before an episode wherein I encountered a really big cloud
of bugs that apparently had glue for guts. I found that upon leveling out
for cruise, I couldn't seem to get up to my normal IAS (I thought maybe the
nose gear had been trapped, partly extended, by the nose gear door - a
problem I had for a while early on). Tried recycling the gear but didn't
help. Landed and found the leading edges coated with what felt like sand
paper (Billions and Billions of squashed bugs). Once cleaned off, the
problem went away. Don't remember the exact loss of IAS (maybe 20 kts) but
was enough to get one's attention. I can only assume it was caused by loss
of laminar flow.

Dan Schaefer
Early LNC2, N235SP

Dan Schaefer