John DeRosa Sky Soaring Chicago IL wrote:
I just bought a DG-101. Already I am thinking of ways to improve the
performance. One thought I had was adding winglets but I have
discounted that for now because of the effort involved. Maybe later.

Another thought was turbulator tape. While my opinion (uneducated) is
that this will add to my L/D, the question of placement on the wing
leaves me stumped. Here are some questions;

I owned a DG-101 for many years, and it performed quite well against
equivalent ships (LS-4, Pegase, ASW-19) without turbulators. I'm sure
there are those who have done it, however, it's not clear to me that the
airfoil was designed to work with them (unlike, say, the DG-300). The
things I found made a difference were installing S seals and mylar on
the ailerons, and sealing the pushrods at the wing roots with rubberized
fabric boots. If I remember correctly, mine also had mylar on the
rudder, a seal on the elevator pushrod, and a fabric tape seal on the
bottom of the elevator.

The other thing to do is move the CG back to around 20% forward of the
rear limit, it does make a difference. There is a mounting for a lead
weight at the end of the tail boom. DG also sells a brass tailwheel, I
had a local machine shop make one for me.

I'd skip the winglets, as the wing wasn't intended to take those sorts
of forces. DG does offer a kit which converts the wing tips to the
upswept style used on the 300, this allegedly will provide a measurable
increase in performance...

Marc