Posted for <lhenney@charter.net>:

Marv,

I can only echo what has already been said. No apparent value except a
couple knot slower stall speed (which is not needed IMHO). And.... Snap out
of it Man! I would think a man that would peel his horizontal tail spar off
and rebuild would learn the "except a few imperfections" lesson by now. :)
The mountain of work alone (ignoring all the analysis) would overwhelm me.

I was glad in the end to read: <It's not like there isn't enough to do in
simply building the airplane according to plan.>

Come fly with us Marv, soon!

Respectfully submitted,

Larry
N360LH 710 hours
Fastest LNC2 in the Western Hemisphere

[Your points are well taken.  I did a little sketching in order to see what the real amount of benefit might be, just from an area standpoint, and it appears that with a reasonably relocated hinge point (6" below lower wing skin, in line with present flap hinge line) it appears that there would only be a localized (ie, in flap portion of span only) chord extension of about 2.5% at 10 degress to a max of about 5.5% at 40 degrees of deflection.  It's fairly obvious to me that the tracked full Fowler flaps gain much more area during the earlier segments of deployment than a simply hinged semi-Fowler like this does.  There is no way I am interested in coming up with a system similar to that found on the IV, nor do I feel that the modest amount of area gained with this design is worth all the extra effort.  It was an interesting thought and exercise, but I think I can find better ways to spend my building time.  Thanks for humoring me, though.  <g>    <marv>    ]