No pants

[bryris]

I've decided to try an experiment and fly for the next 6 months or so with no wheel pants. I have very nice laminar flow fancy pants on my airplane. They look nice, are painted to match, etc. However, I've flown a few times with the main pants removed and I am quite confident that the airplane is faster without the pants on. Seems that many people talk about a 5-7 knot increase in speed with the fancy pants installed. I'm not seeing it in my particular case, at least so far. I've been flying a few hours now without the mains, but with the nose. The airplane seems about 3 knots faster.

The ease of wheel administration is improved sans pants. Easy to air up, inspect the tire condition, brakes, clean the struts, you name it. There is no advantage to pants other than looks and maybe speed. However, I haven't seen the speed benefit yet.

I'm going to remove them, clean them up thoroughly and put them on the shelf until at least my annual (about 6 months). This will give me about 30-40 hours of real world experience flying my airplane without pants. If I end up convinced that the speed is no different and perhaps faster than with them, I may just leave them off permanently. Unfortunately, on my airplane, the nose wheel has got to be removed to get the nose pant off. The mains are easy to don/doff, however.

Anyone else follow a similar path? I like the looks of the pants, but I also like the ease of no pants.

 

[kju1pitt]

 

[Domenick]

 

[Ray93J]

 

[biggblukat]

 

[Tweety]

 

[marcoleon]

 

[SNKDTR]

 

[kf6iat]

 

[Azpilot]