Joe wrote made very good points about ironing out the problems during taxi testing. That's invaluable, and I did that as well, although I didn't realize it until reading Joe's post. I did about 70 "tail-up" runs down the runway to get familiar with the transition from flight to tail-down configuration, and I think it prepared me well. Others have said it's crazy to do that...that you're just opening yourself up to damaging the plane, but I think these tests, one-after-the-other, are invaluable. I went out early and went first down 360, did a u-turn, and back down 180, listening to the radio, announcing what I was doing, and looking for traffic before each run. You can knock out a lot of taxi tests in a hurry that way. The Corvair never cared about the CHTs, but you should keep an eye on that kind of thing.
Of course there are lots of "first flight" checklists and guidelines out there for the first flight itself. For the actual first flight in a KR, Rick Junkin's work is a good one, but I'm not sure he ever used it to fly a KR (correct me if I'm wrong). For KR first flights, a NO WIND situation is the smart way to go. Do it early in the morning or late in the day, but you don't want the sun in your eyes during landing.... I can tell you from last weekend! KR's are not your average spam can, and tend to float forever, especially without a belly board or flaps. The more time you are gliding along above the surface, the more susceptible you are to gusts and "bumps", and you will be moving faster than your C-150 experience has taught you to deal with. But even before landing, you need to get up in the air and determine the INDICATED speed at which the plane stalls, flaps or belly board deployed. Whatever you do, you'd better be inches over the runway when you reach that speed while landing, although ground effect will add some safety margin. First landings are always best made at a very long runway with plenty of room for burning off speed. Most conventional wisdom is do make your approach at something like 15% -20% higher, than stall speed but that's a little fast for KRs. There have been a lot more KR pilots have problems trying to land too fast, as opposed to stalling on first landing. Jim Faughn wrote a pretty good work on first landings, and it's at http://www.krnet.org/faq/chapter11/faughn/perfect_landing.html . Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com http://www.n56ml.com -----------------------------------------------
