Joe Nunley wrote: > Do I need my speed brake installed before my first flight? I have a mechanical speed brake ready to install but I am ready to fly. My thought was fly sooner, keep it simple with no additional items to effect the first flight. I live on a 3000 foot grass strip.
If you have clear approaches (flat fields), it's a wide runway, and you can put it right on the runway on your first landing, that'd be great. But if you have trees to clear on the approach end, and have never experienced a KR landing to know how badly it floats in ground effect, I wouldn't take that chance. I would think you'd want to go to a nearby airport with wide long runways for your first few flights anyway, for just that reason. I hangared my plane in a T-hangar a few miles from my home airport, and I'm glad I did. Even after a lot of landings at a 5000' runway, I almost ran off the end of my home runway on the first flight in, and that runway is 2600' long. Width is another factor if you are flying a taildragger and aren't very experience with it. Even now, in the KR2 with a huge belly board, I come very close to running off our 40' wide runway sometimes, mainly because poor visibility through that stupid bubble canopy limits my vision to the area off my left wingtip, so I'm perpetually behind the curve when it comes to correcting the taildragger tendency to drift off to one side. I only land without the flaps (N56ML) or belly board (N891JF) if there's a failure (which hasn't happened yet) or purely for the reminder of what it's like (maybe once a year), and there's a considerable difference in the comfort factor. That speed brake continues to slow you down, all the way to the other end of the runway. I can immediately tell if the board is down while taxiing...it takes too many RPM to move the plane down the runway. If you pile it into the trees on the far end of the runway on your first flight, you will kick yourself to death... Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com http://www.n56ml.com
