I have thought long and hard and spoke to several people and have finally decided what direction to head in with my new 2S project.
I will go with the new airfoil. I will change the angle of the landing gear bracket to a few more degrees vertical than the Stock Diehl to give me more ground clearance. I will also make new bottom brackets that are longer and have a different angle due to the leg angle change. I discussed this with Dan Diehl and he agrees that this would be better than just using longer legs. Since I will be using the thicker airfoil I can angle the mounting bracket on the spar, but I will probably just weld up new ones and sell the old ones. I thought of using big flaps in the outboard wings like Mark did, but I don't think I want to do that much extra work. After a lot of thought on flaps and belly boards I am back to my original plan I came up with 16 years ago when I bought my first set of KR plans. I am going to keep the flaps in the stub wings, but I will make each stub about 8" longer. The flaps will also have more chord, almost all the way to the aft spar. I don't know why they were not designed with more chord to begin with, probably because they would hit the ground with the original short retract gear. The flaps will be carbon fiber, and possibly also the rest of the wing. I will do some more thinking on if I will change the chord or span any to maintain the original aspect ratio and wing area or change it slightly. Making the stub wings longer does a lot for me. I get bigger flaps, I have a much stronger wing, I will have room to keep all my fuel in the stub wing tanks. I would be interrested to hear if anyone else has extended the stubs. The elevator spar is already built shorter than the stab for less elevator surface area. I will keep it like this and add and internal elevator ballance. I will also make a removable piece aroung the elevator and rudder area for working on it like Steve Jones did. Engine will most likely be a Corvair, unless I happen to find a great deal on a Jabiru 3300 or Rotax 914. Now back to finishing the ceramic tile in the kitchen so I can get it out of the garage where it is in the way of the plane. Next weekend I will paint and carpet my spare bedroom so I can get that carpet out of the garage also. After that I will tear down the divider wall I put in the 2 car separate garage so the plane and all the junk in the attached 1 car garage can go in there while I finish my office in the 1 car garage. Then a bunch of stuff will go back in the 1 car garage or on the storage space I am building above it. Then I can get to working on the plane. I knew it would be a month or two before I touched the plane, but now I have time to completely plan everything, sell the parts I don't need, and buy what I do need. Anyone in the market for a completed forward spar? Brian Kraut Engineering Alternatives, Inc. www.engalt.com
