Rebuilding my KR-2

"Stealth Pilot" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 7 Dec 2003 19:55:25 -0500, "James R. Freeman"
wrote:

480 Lbs. is the design empty weight for the KR-2 but most come in about
540.
Go to http://www.fly-kr.com the official web site of R&R or
http://www.krnet.org the builders group.

typical problems we are aware of in australia
they come out over empty weight and quite often have an aft cg
problem.

the fuselage around the cockpit is structurally sound though. alan
decked his at 80knots after the canopy opened in flight (side hinged)
the aircraft was totalled but nothing penetrated the cockpit. he got
out shaken but unhurt and has almost completed the rebuild.

one other problem is the long AN3 bolts attaching the alloy casting
gear legs to the torsion beam. these are not strong enough. with
engineering assistance the local guy has used high strength NAS bolts
of about AN4 diameter. in failure the nuts on the AN3's just pull
straight off the bolts taking the threads with them.

Forrest
pay attention to empty weight. it is important.
what you find in overweight aircraft is that the airspeed of lowest
drag increases over what it could be.
this means that on approach to landing you have to keep the speed up
or the induced drag rises quickly and as it does the sink rate
increases.
a heavily loaded Wittman Tailwind for example will approach at 70
knots quite happily but will develop quite alarming sink rates below
60 knots unless you have power on. it stalls at 47 knots in landing
configuration.
in a gusting 20 knot crosswind it becomes a really attention grabbing
exercise to approach at 70 knots round out and wash off the excess
airspeed down to landing speed, while juggling the drift, without
whanging it on so hard that you bend something ...or end up in yet
another go around.
overweight takes all the fun out of flying I can tell you.
you can only correct the problem by not building it in.
Stealth Pilot
Australia



Hello Stealth Pilot,

I think it's pretty cool to be hearing from Australia. I was in port at
Gerldton (sp.?) W. Australia for a week when I was in the Navy. Some nice
folks took me in for a couple of days and we took in some local sights
(~200k radius) cruising about in their ute. One day I hope to visit there
again.

I was told that my KR-2 has had the wings and tail extended. However, I
have not confirmed that yet. The logs are a lot sketchy and much of the
paperwork seems to be missing. The previous owner is reportedly dead.
Reportedly death not attributable to flight related incident.

Your post attached here is very informative. Big John warned I might be in
a little deep with this machine as a low time pilot. Maybe being a low
time -student- pilot will help matters a bit? :-0 The complications are no
big bother to me though. I like to have creative endeavors to occupy my
mind with. And my flight instructor was good enough to have mixed my
breakfast up a bit a couple of times to fasten the concept that getting
airborne was not to be taken lightly. Anyway, I'll post some dimensions
sometime in the next couple of days and keep plugging away at this project.
I'm currently in what I like to think of as the cost of my education. It
has become apparent to me that a new project will be in order once this one
is finished. I'm getting the idea that some of the bells and whistles might
have to wait until then. Maybe.

By the way, I'm not terribly happy with the way the landing gear was bolted,
though it must have been safe enough to put a bunch of hours on the plane.
And the canopy attachment (forward hinged) was becoming frayed. I'm trying
to figure out how to get it to slide forward instead. But ... well, we'll
see.

Thanks,
Forrest