Watching wings channel, drinking a beer...

[O.P.]

It's something on XP type of stuff, or advanced AC. It had three of my favorites. I learned there were 290+ Cutlasses built. Very cool plane, under powered and had some freaky long landing gear (common Walt, cut that baby loose, I wanna see one fly). They had the flying body, another very cool rig. And they had the XP-67, the coolest idea ever. They were talking about laminar flow and the XP-67. I kinda get it, but they were saying that disturbances at certain times ruined the flow and that the solution to the problem was something like, putting holes, or something on the surface that would suck the bad flow/disturbance off of the surface. They said that the maintenance and construction of a surface was cost prohibitive. Anyone know more about this, or the theory? I still think this would be a great "new built" airplane, given whats known now and the manufacturing techniques available.

[bdk]

...disturbances at certain times ruined the flow and that the solution to the problem was something like, putting holes, or something on the surface that would suck the bad flow/disturbance off of the surface. They said that the maintenance and construction of a surface was cost prohibitive. Anyone know more about this, or the theory?

Hmmmm... Looks like this may have been first tried on a B-18!

http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/History/Publications/PDF/Laminar.pdf#search='laminar%20flow%20control%20suction'

The main problem is keeping the holes from getting plugged up in service. Works great in the wind tunnel, not so great in real life.

[airnutz]

BDK,
How about this direct link...No pdf
http://lisar.larc.nasa.gov/index.cgi
clik on a/c browse...I love the quality resolution of these images...Zoom-in
..and yer countin' rivets on the B-18. Presents a case for justifying top
taxpayer $$ for a "good" photo!! No worries, no blurries!

OP
Yes it was too bad the Cutlass became the "gutless" due to it's being
behind the "available engine curve". Cutlass had many great attributes and design cues that the Douglas Skyray posessed. Both elegant designs,
in their time!

Have ya'll had a chance to read the book, "The Wrong Stuff",? I,..ummm
..errrrr..."reviewed" the book over a period of evenings at Barnes and
Noble. I d*mn near got tossed-out because I was choking from "coughing"
up a lung! The punch-out from near the Hotel Coronado...to the land-based "trap practices", where the crunched-Cutlass went full throttle
against the retracting cable...was tooo much!! ( Hey Guys, What're ya
Lookin' for?!!!)