¶ saving flags Posted 21 years, 4 months ago on August 26, 2004
It always saddens me when I see a tattered flag. The kind that have been stuck up on a car and driven for so long that they've just fallen to pieces. Like, they always look like they've been through a damn war or something cause they're always threadbare and ratty and half of the cloth is missing. It's not hard to see why they get that way, cause when the car's driving really fast, the air turbulence around the back of the flag whips it back and forth at such high speeds that it's basically like cracking the flag like a whip a couple hundred times a minute. The flapping sound you hear whenever you see a car driving by with a flag is exactly like hearing an incessant string of cracking whips.

So I was thinking that if you somehow controlled and smoothed out the air flow across the flag, then it might last longer somehow. My theory is that if you anchored two pieces of wire/string underneath the flag, offset to one side, and then fastened them to the end corners of the flag, then when the car reaches high speeds, the lines would force the flag to take the shape of a close-hauled sail. This would reduce the turbulence around the flag and should get rid of all the flapping. Of course, it would look like you're sailing a flag, but i'll bet you'd seriously increase the lifespan of your flag. You might look a little weird, too.

Here's my crap-ass ascii diagram

       |.
       | .  
flag-> |. .  <- anchor lines 
       | . . 
       |  . .
    _.==================._   
   /                      \
  |                        |  <- strangely proportioned car
  |________________________|
  |  |                  |  |
  |__|                  |__|

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