Netters,
I've managed to log about 4 hours of flight time in the last few days. Three of them were today. Friday I made a trip for fuel. 38 miles is not too far to fly in a KR when you can get auto fuel for $1.25 !! It's going up to $1.60 as of yesterday but that's still cheap. I had flown 3.2 hours and it took 15.5 gal to fill the tanks. That's a tad over 5 gal per hour but I had some flight time at reduced throttle like a decent from 7500 feet. The wind has been pretty strong the last few days. On the fuel trip the wind was a steady 15 to 19 at 45 degrees to the runway. Today it was approx 12 to 15 from the NW so we were using RW 36, again with a bit of crosswind. No problems. I also made my first landing on grass in a KR. The only problem was the grass was long, about 5 inches or so and very thick, and we had a cross wind of about 90 degees. Did I mention that part of the runway has a bit of a grade, a pond on the right side, and a very large hangar/ machine shed and house on the left. The long grass accounted for more then half of the 1500 to 1700 foot takeoff roll. I used about the same going in. I sure wish I could kill some more of the float this thing has. I was using full speed brake and holding 80mph all the way to flare as the ASI would jump 10 mph in the gusty air. I didn't want to get too slow and I had plenty of runway. Most of the three hours was flown in formation with a Zenair 601 running a Harly Davidson engine, an Acro Sport II, and on one flight the Tripacer. Needless to say I ran at much reduced throttle most of the time. 1850 rpm gives me approx 110 mph cruise. I shut down after the last flight with 34.5 hours on the meter. Not bad considering it's been less than 4 months since sign-off and I've rebuilt the left wing tank, had the prop repitched, rebuilt the induction system, moved the battery, installed a replacement tailwheel, repaired oil leaks, and I guess that's about it. I did a few stalls today and did some more testing on the slips. The stalls are amazingly gentle. As for the slips I think I found the technique for the KR. I found I don't want to put the wing down with aileron but simply start the slip with rudder. As I bring in rudder the opposit wing goes down and the nose pitches down. As the nose pitches down I come in with a bit of back stick to hold the attitude I want. When I want to end the slip I slowly bring the controls back to nuetral. If not done smoothly it will really toss you around. I could start the slip with the VSI showing 500 to 600 fpm decent and in the slip it went past 1000 fpm decent. The KR is much quicker responding to control inputs then anything you buy at the store. For those of you setting up your cockpit, make your stick layout so you can rest the weight of your arm on something other than the stick. It's the only way to fly the KR smoothly. In mine, my wrist rest on my leg and I fly with wrist and finger action. ( I have dual sticks) Returning home on the fuel run I stretched my legs out to the firewall between the peddles. This dropped my leg too low to rest my arm and the KR had a totally different feel. I moved my hand down the stick and that too gave it a different feel but one I could get used to if I could rest my arm on something. Anyway, something to think about. If you want to fly a fighter and are too old to join the Air Force, get back out to the shop and finish the KR!!!!!!!!!!!!! Larry Flesner
