Prior to my first flight I did things similar to what Joe Horton and Mark Langford report. I did lots of slow speed taxi, then progressively higher speeds on the runway with many trips up and down the runway with the nose wheel held varying amounts off the pavement. I fixed lots of gripes between runs and put 6.8 hours on the tach in the process. I made three different fixes on the brakes, rebuilt the carburetor, figured out how to set the mixture, re-rigged the throttle, re-rigged the ailerons, changed out wing tanks from fiber glass to welded aluminum, chased oil leaks and did two more condition inspections before putting any air under the tires. My EAA Chapter 478 Flight Advisor is a former Navy test pilot and is now employed as a civilian instructor with the Navy Test Pilot School. He arranged for me to fly several different civilian tri-gear aircraft to get varied experience with different performing aircraft. I obtained 6.1 hours flying a Pulsar XP; that is very close to KR-2 tri-gear performance. That still did not prepare me for the surprise when the elevator trim tab broke at lift off rotation.
Sid Wood Tri-gear KR-2 N6242 Mechanicsville, MD, USA ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yoshio Marino is a German KR builder who is unable to post to the list for some reason, and he has the following questions. He is ready for first test flights on his KR and requesting further information from Sid Wood's test flight experience (see below) and is also trying to connect up with any other German builders/pilots. His email address is mail_morino at yahoo.de. ------------------------------------------------- Hi Mark, Do you know about the special "Test Pilot Training"program? I am reading Rick Junkin?s "Test Plan for N52BL". Is it possible to get contact with 3 KRs in Germany, KRnetters? Many thanks again. Yoshio, Hamburg, N5247N ---------------------------------------------------- Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com http://www.n56ml.com ----------------------------- Morning Guys,We have been seeing all this information about first flights and it is all good. But first things first. I don't know where or how but I had decided to do 10 hours of taxi testing before first flight. Taxi testing is when I found that the carb did not like ram air. Taxi test is when the brakes were adjusted. Taxi test is when I learned where trim should be set. Taxi testing is where I learned the stall angle and ensuing roll out. Taxi testing is where I learned handling in a bit of wind variations. Taxi testing is where the carb mixture was set up. Taxi test is where I got a bit comfortable with the plane, And probably a number of other things that I can not even think of. I did the nearly 10 hours I had set out to do over a 2 month period and the changes that were needed for each squawk. It was well over a hundred trips up and down our 3000 ft runway. I just don't think this should be diminished in a quest for a safe first flight.IMHOJoe Horton ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 -----------------------------------------------
