Paul Smith wrote: > I'm retrofitting split flaps into the stub wings attached to the afy spar. > The original stub wings were built without flaps. I believe split flaps > afford a small amount of lift (at lower deployment angles) but produce a > good quantity of drag.
Split flaps have as much lift as plain flaps...so the drag is free! That's why split flaps are better than a belly board, in my humble opinion, allowing slower and therefore safer landing speeds. The slower stall speed they allow also reduces the likelihood of stall/spin accidents during the turn to base (assuming the same speeds were used in both cases). Belly boards are easy to implement, and are far better than nothing, but the split flap solution is simply better from a landing and stall speed standpoint. I've got 800 hours on my split flaps, and I love 'em... Mark Langford N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website at http://www.N56ML.com
