Archer wheel pants on a Cherokee

Jay Honeck wrote:
: Sound insane? Maybe it'd be better to go with all Piper parts (i.e.
: fairings,
: etc). Just curious if anyone else has done such a thing.

: Sounds normal to me -- of course, I'm horribly ill with aviation fever...
: :-)

: A previous owner had wheel pants for a Dakota field approved for
: installation on our 235. He claims it was the most effective speed mod of
: them all. (They are the full "fancy pants"-style, not the ones that only
: cover the tires.)
: --

I thought your plane *was* the newer style. Maybe I thought that because the
pictures I'd seen had the newer wheel pants. What's your bragging page for the plane,
anyway? I cannot find it on your business site.

I'm into improvements on ours, but only ones that aren't insanely expensive.
Thus, I don't do too many...

I've installed a friend's wheel-only pants on ours before. It seemed to give
us about 3 mph... more or less as advertised. The newer style is supposed to be more
like 6-8 mph. The aftermarket "super-ugly-bulbous" ones are supposed to be closer to
10mph. I guess I'll look harder at making this work on ours since we've already got
the newer steyl pants. After all, 6-8 mph is a relatively nice "free" speed increase
in a Cherokee.

-Cory

--

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* Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student *
* Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University *
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