On Monday, February 15, 2016 at 6:17:13 PM UTC+3, Eric Greenwell wrote:
kirk.stant wrote on 2/8/2016 9:55 AM:
Extra bonus - you get some lift off the fuselage!

Maybe this is intended as joke, but the last thing you want is a very
low L/D "airfoil" like the fuselage involved in providing any lift.

I don't agree.

As I've already said once in this thread, you're going to get a certain amount of drag from the fuselage anyway. If the presentation to the airflow for minimum drag generates zero lift then, by the calculus definition of "minimum" of a continuous function, the first little bit of lift will not add any drag. The optimum thing to do is to use it. It might be *very* little, and a very small AoA, but it's nonzero.

If the presentation to the airflow for minimum drag generates non-zero lift ... then of course you'll take it!

Yes, the fuse has a low L/D. But that's better than the 0.0 L/D if you don't take what lift you can from it...