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Dave Anders 244MPH RV-4

pierre smith

Well Known Member
I recently read where California dentist Dave Anders has a CAFE record that beat an HR11 by a bunch!! Do any of you guys know of the mods he did and could you detail them? I'd like to incorporate some of them into my 6A.
Thanks, Pierre Smith
 
Every time that I see his airplane it has something different. I have photographed it at various stages through its life. But I have not seen it for a couple of years now. He has put the sheared wingtips on, the turtledeck fuselage mod, and a carbon fiber cowl with round inlets and (I'm pretty sure) a plenum for engine cooling. I am sure he has many other mods too. Last rumor I heard was that he had made the trailing edges of some controls with the RV-9 style double flush riveting. I am sure others that are more familiar with the airplane could tell us more.
 
Where can I find a link to the turtledeck mod? Our fuselage is arriving in a week or two and if it looks good, I might like to consider it.
 
There is a story of his mods on the net somewhere, I have read through it and it is very intertesting. This guy even lost weight, just to go faster. I will try to remember where I found it, which was by accident. It's out there somewhere.

Cheers, Pete
 
My site moved

Here's a link to the only site I could find on the topic.

http://www.precision3d.com/rv4/rv4_files/fastback.htm


-corey

Correy, I moved this site. http://fastback-4.wheelsup.org

Unfortunately, I have little info on Dave Anders plane. I was reading this post hoping I could make my IO-320 fastback rv-4 burn a significant amount less fuel in cruise vs. stock. 20% is my mark, that's 6gph @ 140 KTAS or 7gph@160 KTAS. I suspect Dave's mods are a step in that direction.
 
Among other things, that airplane has:

Aerodynamic Mod's:

- Lamb wheels and tires and correspondingly smaller pressure recovery (Sam James?) wheel pants.
- Wide chord gear leg fairings.
- Circular cooling air inlets.
- Cooling plenum
- Fairings on virtually every drag producing item such as aileron hinges, fuel drains, etc.
- Fastback modification.
- Tailwheel steering chains removed for speed runs. Also, stock tailwheel replaced with tiny little wheel from a roller skate.

Engine Mod's:

- Severely tweaked O-360 running at 2,900-3,000 RPM. Prop to match.
 
Good on Dave!

RV'ers take note all this done without chopping the wing down. Its an assault on cooling drag, parasite drag and propulsive efficiency. Excellent! Real engineering here, with results to match.
 
Well yes but a little bit of art too

If the man could make his plane fly faster by any means, he would do it. It used to be a standing joke that aero engineers were the only application folks still using slide rules. If it were possible to design the fastest airplane right out of the box based on static engineering rules, development would have stopped in the 1940s. You can bet that Dave Anders, Tracy Saylor, John Huft etc. evolved those super fast birds by standing on the leading edge of text book knowledge and making their own bow wave into some lessor known areas of reality. I have no doubt that they have evolved the configuration through a lot of tweaks that proved less than satisfying in pursuit of excellence.

Bob Axsom
 
speed

Tracy Saylor has a very fast RV6 but not nearly as fast as Anders. I got to talk to Tracy many years ago and he told me the item that took the top speed past the 230-235 mark was retwisting the prop blades. This was long before the Hartzell BA prop.
The Triaviathon score considers top speed, stall speed and rate of climb.
The record set by John Harmon in the 540 powered Rocket was top speed of 244.79. Dave Anders speed was 250.71. That was with the stock turtledeck. The record was set on Sep 27, 1997. Prior to the 2009 Airventure Dave had not raced for quite a while.
The amazing thing is that despite all the very significant mods over many years Daves airplane always seems to look brand new.
 
Dave Anders RV-4 at the 2010 AVC

IMG_4339.jpg

I took this photo of Dave Anders' RV-4 before the start of the 2010 Air Venture Cup race at Mitchell, South Dakota. When he first flew it as it was written up by Jack Cox in Sport Aviation years ago it had a natural aluminum finish with the red stripes. It was a VERY interesting article even by Jack Cox standards. The old and great Sport Aviations dating back to 1953 are (were?) available from the EAA in a big CD set. (yes I have a copy)

Bob Axsom
 
I took this photo of Dave Anders' RV-4 before the start of the 2010 Air Venture Cup race at Mitchell, South Dakota. When he first flew it as it was written up by Jack Cox in Sport Aviation years ago it had a natural aluminum finish with the red stripes. It was a VERY interesting article even by Jack Cox standards. The old and great Sport Aviations dating back to 1953 are (were?) available from the EAA in a big CD set. (yes I have a copy)

Bob Axsom

The plane we saw in Mitchell was scarcely recognizable as the plane photographed by SA in 1993, due to the many changes made. I think he must have put in thousands of hours of work, after winning a Silver Lindy.
 
For useful info on 'what works', I'd suggest a copy of 'Speed With Economy' by Kent Paser. His Mustang II with 160 hp O-320 is about the same speed as (maybe a tad faster than) Tracy Saylor's hotrodded 180 hp RV-6. Just about all the things he did to the M-II are applicable in principle to the RV's, & were used by Anders & Saylor on their planes. Not saying that they directly copied Paser, but what works, works.

I bought a copy from Paser, but a google search indicates you can now purchase .pdf versions on line.

Charlie
 
Charlie

It is indeed a good source book but one caution, I tested the oil additive and I found it to be overrated.

Bob Axsom
 
It's been so long since I read the book, I forgot that was even in there. Given how long it's been since the book was written, I wonder if advances in oil tech has reduced the advantages he saw at the time.

Charlie
 
Last rumor I heard was that he had made the trailing edges of some controls with the RV-9 style double flush riveting. I am sure others that are more familiar with the airplane could tell us more.

Does anyone have any details of this type of trailing edge?

The angle of the RV-9 wedge does not match the angle of the RV-4/-6 aileron.....

Thanks,
Andrew.
 
Correy, I moved this site. http://fastback-4.wheelsup.org

Unfortunately, I have little info on Dave Anders plane. I was reading this post hoping I could make my IO-320 fastback rv-4 burn a significant amount less fuel in cruise vs. stock. 20% is my mark, that's 6gph @ 140 KTAS or 7gph@160 KTAS. I suspect Dave's mods are a step in that direction.

Follow-up... It does 5.5gph at 140KTAS today, and I'd like to get it under 5 in the next couple years.
 
Follow-up... It does 5.5gph at 140KTAS today, and I'd like to get it under 5 in the next couple years.
Bruce, I think you will have to change your wings.

How does 140 knots TAS @ 3.1 GPH at 7,500' (9,820' DA) for 25% power sound?
Screen image

If you want to go high, 159 knots TAS @ 5.2 GPH at 15,500' (17,623' DA) for 43% power LOP.
Screen image

That is a -9. The only "mods" are that I have a Sam James short cowl and plenum, which I'm not sure does me much good, an O-360, and dual P-mags. Other than that, it is stock with no speed mods, and yes, those numbers are with a carb.

The -9 is an amazingly efficient airframe!
 
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How does 140 knots TAS @ 3.1 GPH at 7,500' (9,820' DA) for 25% power sound?

If you want to go high, 159 knots TAS @ 5.2 GPH at 15,500' (17,623' DA) for 43% power LOP.

Bill, you're running a Catto prop, right? Seeing those numbers, I'm thinking that I must be leaving power on the table somewhere. I was at 7500 yesterday, DA around 8k, and getting 145kt TAS on 7(!) GPH. Catto 3-blade, repitched once to increase RPM. Hmm.
 
Bill, you're running a Catto prop, right? Seeing those numbers, I'm thinking that I must be leaving power on the table somewhere. I was at 7500 yesterday, DA around 8k, and getting 145kt TAS on 7(!) GPH. Catto 3-blade, repitched once to increase RPM. Hmm.

Same. My normal cruise at 8k and 60% power is a bit shy of 7GPM, 142ish KTAS. That's with 150HP and a sensenich fixed pitch metal prop.

Chris
 
Bill, you're running a Catto prop, right? Seeing those numbers, I'm thinking that I must be leaving power on the table somewhere. I was at 7500 yesterday, DA around 8k, and getting 145kt TAS on 7(!) GPH. Catto 3-blade, repitched once to increase RPM. Hmm.

Yes, I have a Catto but mine is a two bladed that I asked Craig to cut as an "Uber Cruiser". It still climbs like crazy, solo I can see a bit over 2,000 FPM, if I want to. (That's solo, not at GW.)

Catto said I'm probably "closer to 200 HP than 180 HP based on how fast I can turn my prop. At 8,000' DA I can see 175 knots (200 mph) but at 2830 RPM, not where I really want to run it.

One other thing, I am a taildragger. Your nose wheel may impact your speed a bit more than expected.

Same. My normal cruise at 8k and 60% power is a bit shy of 7GPM, 142ish KTAS. That's with 150HP and a sensenich fixed pitch metal prop.

Chris
Remember, I have an O-360 that ECi rated at 188 HP, so my percent power numbers will be different than yours.

Chris, I have dual P-mags which allow me to run well LOP, even with my carb. That 25% percent power blew me away.

Over the weekend I was doing some formation flights with my neighbor in his Champ. I was at 15%, ROP, to go 80 knots. I was way rich trying to keep my CHT's cool at those low airspeeds. As soon as he would climb, my airspeed would drop below 60 knots and I would put in 10 degrees of flaps to stay with him in the climb. When he would level out, I would retract the flaps again. It was a fun dance.
 
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It's been a while, so I might be misremembering...

Dave's RV-4 went a whole lot faster than redline. (Danger, Will Robinson). IIRC, at about 265, he got aerodynamic flutter that caused airframe damage. What fluttered, you ask? No, not the ailerons, it was one of the wheel pants.

"It's an experimental, you can do what you want." But the laws of physics and aerodynamics don't care what you want.
 
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