Dan Heath wrote: > What I want to know is, has anyone ever heard of anyone ever loosing any of > the control surfaces on a KR? The only one that I ever heard of was when a > balance weight came off and the aileron fluttered, and that is only hearsay.
Jeff Duval, one of the guys who flew a KR into this year's Gathering, experienced aileron flutter on at least two occasions that I know of. Both times he was able to tame it (and I'm just guessing, but he probably pulled up and reduced power). He's a very experienced corporate pilot that knows what to do in such situations. Most of us probably wouldn't be so lucky. Later investigation proved that the ailerons either were totally not balanced, or way underbalanced. He balanced them and has had no problems since then. I guess that doesn't count as a loss of surface, but he came close. His KR is the orange one that showed up at the "East Coast Gathering" in Columbia in 1998. The other one that comes to mind is the all-composite KR look-alike that did a high speed pass at a Gathering in the 80's and self destructed, reportedly because of aileron flutter, and at something like 240 mph, as I recall. That thing didn't qualify as a KR though, in my book... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
