I got a trim failure once. The failure cause was that during an annual inspection, the inspector did not like the way my trim tab bracket looked like (it had been redrilled twice), and he had me make another one. Unfortunately, being very inexperienced, I glued the new one with the wrong glue, and it broke loose in flight. Well, all I noticed was a "funny stick" feeling, and I realized onl after landing at destination what had happened. So, I neutralized the trim tab with duct tape, took off, and flew back to base to fix it.
Stick forces are, indeed, very light, and a KR is flown "hands-on" all the time. The trim brings comfort, especially considering the CG differences between configurations (one on board, two on board, full fuel, low fuel...). But the stick forces are easily overcome in any case. Serge Vidal KR2 ZS-WEC Tunis, Tunisia (Pilot) Orleans, France (Aircraft) -----Original Message---- From: krnet-boun...@mylist.net [mailto:krnet-boun...@mylist.net]On Behalf Of Brian Kraut Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2004 18:23 To: KRnet Subject: Re: KR>Elevator trim If I built another one I would definitely put the trim on. I would also do a small aileron trim tab with the same type of simple control cable so I could fold maps, etc. when it was trimed. That was a real pain to do using my knee to keep the plane from rolling. If I used an electric trim, which I wouldn't do, I wouldn't bother doing a trim indicator. I would just see that the trim tab was around neutral during the preflight and wouldn't worry about it after that. My opinion is that you could very safely take off in a KR with the trim full up or down and you wouldn't even notice that it was out of trim until you got to altitude and tried taking your hand off the stick. I actually did my first landing with the trim full up. I tried trimming the plane and forgot that on mine pushing the trim lever forward was up trim, not down, so I thought that I just didn't have enough down trim and didn't realize that I was trimming in the wrong direction. Again, the stick forces are so light and I couldn't take my hand off the stick to keep it from rolling that I really barely noticed that I had to keep the stick pushed forward a little. I couldn't try flying with elevator trim only since I always need to hold some right aileron and it was impossible to push the stick to the right and let the elevator go where it wanted at the same time. If I did loose elevator control I am fairly confident that I could land with elevator trim and aileron control only, but I would definitely go to a grass strip where I wouldn't have as much of the KR ram the stick forward as soon as the mains touch to keep from bouncing tendancy. -----Original Message----- From: Dan Heath <da...@alltel.net> Sent: Jan 29, 2004 5:49 AM To: "kr...@mylist.net" <kr...@mylist.net> Subject: Re: KR>Elevator trim RE: I rarely even bothered to trim it. I always had my hand on the stick Brian, You make a good point. Other than for a "piece of mind" backup to elevator control, why do KR builders spend so much time and money on elevator trim that they most likely will never use. I rarely used mine for the same reason, you always have your hand on the stick. I would really like an aileron trim to offset the tendency to roll to the right or left, as mine did the same thing. See N64KR at http://KR-Builder.org - Then click on the pics Daniel R. Heath - Columbia, SC da...@kr-builder.org See you in Mt. Vernon - 2004 - KR Gathering See our EAA Chapter 242 at http://EAA242.org _______________________________________ to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html _______________________________________ to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html
