I'm still interested to know how much heat the air picks up when passing through a radiator.  I realize that this can vary quite a bit, but I just don't have a feel for how hot the air gets.  If it's 80 outside, does the air exit the back of the rad at 90, or 190, or?  Someone should really make an instrument with spare temp sensors that we can use to measure these things :-)

 

Cheers,

Rusty (EWP's were in LA yesterday)

 

Yeah, yeah, I get the hint.   Well, I do have such an instrument in my plane with a sensor in front of and behind the right-side  rad and seeing as much as 50 - 60 deg F temp rise.    This could mean 2 things.   Terrific rad performance or lousy air flowrate.    The airflow on the right is not as good as on left where I happen to know it is pretty good, so I should install a temp probe there too.

 

In my version of what constitutes the optimum aircraft cooling system,  the exit air temp should be as close to the target coolant temp (on exit from rad) as possible,  i.e.,  the higher the better.  This means you have used the cooling air for everything it is worth, or put another way, you used the minimum number of cooling CFM to do the job. 

 

Tracy