Originally Posted by
Lookleft
So my turn in opinion ping pong, from the above it can be taken that it is not an OWT.
Not really. the "above" is nothing more than a completely unsubstantiated claim by an anonymous person on an internet forum that some texts had an "aerodynamic explanation". That's it. If that, in your mind is proof of anything, I think we've found the problem here. You have no idea what constitutes proof of anything. Until we have the information allegedly printed in those alleged texts, we really have nothing. The fact that you're jumping up and down and clapping your hands and saying "Well now we have proof!!!" is really kind of laughable. I have no idea what "texts" Lead Sled is referring to, nor what sort of "aerodynamic explanation" ... and neither do you. His description is pretty short on detail. A little story about people on internet forums claiming certain sources say certain things. A while back I was involved in a discussion on another aviation forum about certain point of dispute. The guy with whom I was debating posted: "well a few years ago "publication XXX" tested such and such and their results found blah, blah" Of course "Blah blah" was exactly his side of the debate. Unbeknownst to him, I was on the staff of publication XXX when they did the said testing, in fact I was pretty thoroughly involved in that testing. The thing is, the results of the testing did not show "blah, blah" Not only did it not show "Blah, blah" the testing we performed did not even examine the question at hand or measure anything which would even shed any light on that question. Yet here he was, quoting that publication as a definitive source that proved his point. Now, I know the guy in question by reputation, and I don't believe that he was being intentionally dishonest. I think that as a result of flawed memory and confirmation bias, he genuinely believed that the article in question really did have test results whcih proved his point. But, it most assuredly did not. Similarly, with LS's vague claim about what some text from half a century ago said, without actually seeing what the text really *did* say, we don't really know, now do we? I'm a "show me guy". (For those in the US, yeah, I was born in Missouri.) You want to claim that some source or another says something? Cool, show me. I'll read it and we'll see what it really says and then we can discuss that.
I could be convinced that there is some effect out there which allows you to cruise at a measurable higher speed than your normal maximum cruising speed with the same power setting. It will take more than "some pilot said this is true" or "this guy who wrote some really popular aviation books said it was true" or "some guy on an internet forum claims he had a text half a century ago that explained this". What it would take is actual data, measured by some reputable and verifiable entity, together with some coherent explanation in aerodynamic terms of the nature of the phenomenon. So far that has been lacking here.