And substandard aircraft manufacturers.

Yep. Now we install MCAS and auger big airliners into the dirt.

we have come along way since then.

No worries about anything else ever again either. 

Yes I was referencing that 'story'....and no more worries about aerodynamic drag...ever again!

Rocket-Pod, anyone?

Just mount a pair of JATO's under the frame...you wont worry about too much drag ever again!

I was thinking to try to do that with a full width 350 watt-ish solar module on the top rear of my rPod overhanging the back window. It would also provide some summer shade in that area. I'm thinking the side treatment would be 0.090 aluminum sheeting which i would extend forward to enclose the sides of two additional solar modules in front of the rear one. The a/c unit and tv antenna would go away, so that the front modules would drop down to meet the existing roofline. I would also need some type of small front fairing to smooth the airflow where the front module comes down to the roof.  That's about as far as I've gotten with the concept so far. 

Its waaay too much. 

But, its not the only way. You can use coast down testing as I mentioned earlier. This is how folks evaluate the effectiveness of aero add-ons for semis.  There are free calculators to input the data into, and as you are coasting from a high speed where aero drag dominates to a low speed where rolling resistance dominates, you can get decent numbers for both factors. The calculators use linear regression analysis to obtain the two coefficients. 

I dd it for my Highlander last year and got pretty decent initial results. I haven't done it for the combined rig yet because I want to  remove my a/c unit and install my solar array first. I'm going to shoot for 1 kW. Once that's on I want to do coast down testing to optimize the solar module tilts to see if I can get them to act as spoilers. 

Not only saving energy towing but simultaneously producing energy, that will beat lostagain's Shasta wings   

And finally, there is the issue of the GIGANTIC vacuum at the tail end of the R-pod.

I think the only way to figure this out is to rent the wind tunnel at Moffett Field. 

I have not checked what the rental rate is on that puppy.

To keep on topic, the purpose of the fins would be to assist in the frontal drag and cut through the wind with a minimal amount of fuel, kind of like a streamlined locomotive of 1938.

So, are you trying to make your R-Pod look like a Shasta?  (scroll down to first picture in "Original Condition Shasta Trailer")

Wings create both lift and drag. So more than likely you'll get both sway AND worse fuel economy. Try it, let us know what happens, I wanna see the youtube video.

i have a kayak I was thinking of taking camping, maybe I'll try it. Another way to determine air drag is through coast down testing. All you need is a couple of miles of dead flat smooth road, no wind, no traffic, and a smart phone to video your speedometer during the tests.  

Originally posted by Happy Tripping So,just for fun, please look in your operator’s manual and let us know if your towvehicle passes or fails its manufacturers’s total frontal area requirements. I knowthat my entirely satisfactory Jeep Cherokee (towing capacity 4500 lbs) fails,and I am very interested to see who passes.

2014 Toyota Tacoma Access cab V6 4x4 with towing package.  Trailer frontal area is not even mentioned in the owners manual.

Good point.  The drag of the rig is what matters, not the drag of the trailer separately. Depending on the aerodynamics of the tow vehicle the addition of the trailer might have a more or less dramatic increase on the combined drag. And if you want you can add aero devices like the Purpleline product to the TV, to try to reduce it. 

The numbers I worked back to in my post were for my combined rig. YMMV (literally).