NetHeads, What a Gathering! Best yet, in my book, and Larry has agreed to do it again next year. His organizational work was top notch, as others have mentioned, and it went very nicely. And as always, the camaraderie was excellent.
I was very lucky to have flown not one, but THREE KRs while I was there, probably the biggest benefit of only weighing 143 pounds. Not only that, but I got to hang out the back door of Larry's Tri-Pacer again (thanks to pilot Bill) and get some more great air-to-air shots. I have about 800 pictures to sift through, so I might have to do it piecemeal, with first priority being a detailed look at Bill Clapp's amazing KR. I flew it and it just blew my mind when compared to the typical KR2. You can put it in a turn and let go of the stick and it'll just stay there, not changing pitch attitude at all, but slowly turning back to straight ahead, overshooting slightly, and then returning back to straight ahead, all in about a minute's time, and with pitch staying right where you left it! Pull it up to climb and it just stays in the same attitude until you tell it to do differently. And that eighth inch of trim is centered around the elevator's trailing edge, not up or down, so trim drag is minimal. I don't know how much of this is due to the overall length and tail volume increase that the S has, or how much is due to the new wing/tail incidences, but whatever it is, pitch stability is NOT a problem in the new generation of KR's! He says he can fly from 80 to 180 mph, the trim tab is moved a grand total of LESS than an eighth of an inch! That is nothing short of a miracle in my book, considering that many KR2s run out of up trim with a passenger aboard. I've heard Larry say that he can fly for something like half an hour hands off in his KR, so maybe it's mostly the length change that does it (feel free to chime in, Larry). Whatever it is, I'm pretty stoked to get mine in the air! And the Corvair was so quiet and smooth, unlike any small airplane I've ever flown in, with gobs of power. Truly a wonderful airplane. I really feel like the KR series is finally what it should be. The neatest thing about Bill's is that mine should be almost aerodynamically identical, except that Bill has added aerodynamic balances to his elevator. That would be easy to duplicate on mine, and I might just do it to quantify the difference later on. But for now I have faith that I'll also have one sweet-flying time machine on my hands! I won't swear that I'll get many photos out there soon, because we're going on vacation for 10 days shortly and work has me completely buried, but here's a picture of Steve Glover's outstanding KR2 just to hold you over until then... http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/glover.jpg Mark Langford, Huntsville, AL N56ML at hiwaay.net see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford
