A detailed experimental investigation of interaction of free convection and radiation in a single fin mounted on a heated horizontal base has been carried our. The study makes use of a differential interferometer for estimating the convective heat fluxes. A numerical method coupled with the experimentally measured convective fluxes is used to evaluate the radiative fluxes. Experiments were conducted to study the effect of fin height, surface emissivity and the base temperature level on convection and radiation. Based on the experiments correlations have been presented for both the total and radiative heat transfer rates from the fin flats. Comparisons are made between the experimental results and two-dimensional numerical computations based on finite volume method.