Watch the Jet Get Built and Painted

[boxer3main]

if it aint Boeing, I aint going! ( My cousin flys a airbus for Frontier and after a few drinks told me that the Boeings fly nicer and ride better.)

After all the cutbacks in the fleets it's amazing that anybody is ordering new airplanes, unless I just totally don't understand the industry, which I don't.

if trucking got 1/1000th the magical funding these airlines get..

scania v8 would only be one common sense legend...america would have their version.

and those winglets do nothing, I remember when the c17 showed up with them. Some professionals got outright mad ... I remember one thought it was for bigger lights, because it absolutely useless otherwise.

no worse than a trunk wing on a subaru I guess.

[ls7gto]

Boxer, I call BS, if it didnt work the wouldnt pay the price to retrofit, if they didnt see the gain. It has to do with wing design for it to be effective, they dont work with all wings.
Winglets reduce induced drag, resulting in a more effecient lifting device (the wing) it's quite a bit of complicated geometry, involving many lift vectors. The way it was explained to me, think of the principle of an "infinite wing". With an infinite wing, there are no wingtip vortices, or the associated induced drag effects that come along with those as the slipstream is increased over the wingtip. Winglets help create the effect of an infinite wing, although that principle is mainly theoretical in nature.
Winglets accept a penalty in the drag that gets worse with speed (Parasite) to produce an improvement in the drag that gets better with speed (Induced). That suggests to me that the optimum cruise speed should decrease with the addition of winglets. That there is still some efficiency improvement left when cruise Mach is increased would thus be an indication that the efficiency improvement if aircraft configuration were allowed to dictate cruise speed would be tremendous.

More proof....http://www.b737.org.uk/winglets.htm

[Chassisman]

Boxer, I call BS, if it didnt work the wouldnt pay the price to retrofit, if they didnt see the gain. It has to do with wing design for it to be effective, they dont work with all wings.
Winglets reduce induced drag, resulting in a more effecient lifting device (the wing) it's quite a bit of complicated geometry, involving many lift vectors. The way it was explained to me, think of the principle of an "infinite wing". With an infinite wing, there are no wingtip vortices, or the associated induced drag effects that come along with those as the slipstream is increased over the wingtip. Winglets help create the effect of an infinite wing, although that principle is mainly theoretical in nature.
Winglets accept a penalty in the drag that gets worse with speed (Parasite) to produce an improvement in the drag that gets better with speed (Induced). That suggests to me that the optimum cruise speed should decrease with the addition of winglets. That there is still some efficiency improvement left when cruise Mach is increased would thus be an indication that the efficiency improvement if aircraft configuration were allowed to dictate cruise speed would be tremendous.

More proof....http://www.b737.org.uk/winglets.htm

Here's from the horses mouth so to speak..... http://www.aviationpartners.com/testimonials.html

[ls7gto]

thanks for backing me up!

[Chassisman]

thanks for backing me up!

I figure if he paid me 85K for a chopper....he must be doing something right....LOL
YOUR WELCOME!

[oldsman496]

i heard them thar planes got better gas mileage with them winglet thingys....maybe NHTSA should mandate them on cars?

[SuperBuickGuy]

the winglets (at least one small planes) promote low-speed stability - not sure on the larger planes.

it is cool seeing those plane bodies travelling down to Renton... the wings go by semi from Everett - not sure why they don't just hang them off the side of the train car.

Also fun to watch them take off from Renton. The runway at renton goes north over lake washington (literally the end of the runway strip is a seawall) - apparently there are several airplanes at the bottom of Lake Washington that didn't make their first flight.