|  | Join Date: Nov 2003 | Location: Colorado | Posts: 856 |  |
Oops, forgot the picture. You can see a vortilon on the LE and two fins on the TE. Alan Shaw is calling these TE fins "feathers". He says that these trailing edge devices improve the effectiveness of the elevons. Both surfaces block the spanwise flow of the stagnation line and deflect it aft. In the case of the vortilon this deflected material rolls up into a vortex and has a similar effect to a fence. To get the lowest drag you need to know where the stagnation point is at CLmax and place the vortilon so that it doesn't block it until you're at an AoA where separation is starting to become a problem.
Norm
Sometimes I act more clueless than I really am  |