NetHeads, I rigged up my ailerons over the weekend. I was fairly amazed at how well it went. I had already made most of the cables and they were in place, but a couple were not cut to length and had fittings on the end yet. Plans that I made years ago fell right into place (after much head scratching), with only one real snafu. Still, my design could have used some more thought in the accessibility area!
I did my "final" weight and balance Monday. Total empty weight is 732 pounds, but paint will probably add 12 pounds or so. The CG range with pilot and empty to full fuel is 16.4% to 19.8%, out of the 15% to 30% of chord range that is generally considered safe for the KR. Add a 227 lb passenger to get to the 1200lb gross and I'm at 26% chord. Total CG range from skinny pilot with no fuel to full gross is 4.5", or less than 10% chord. At gross weight, fuel shift is only 1" full to empty, moving forward as fuel is burned. I didn't just get lucky that it's "right", I've been checking weight and balance forever. I'm really a little further forward than where I want to end up, because the closer to neutral, the faster I'll go. But on the other hand, for somebody just starting out in the KR world, forward is just fine. I still haven't installed my backup battery, so it will go back in the fuselage somewhere, with some pretty small (maybe 16 ga) wires running to it. After all, it's not there to start the engine, just to keep me aloft during an emergency, and that doesn't take much current at all. It will be isolated from the rest of the system (except during charging) by a $3 Radio Shack diode. The 5 pound UPS "backup" battery will get me pretty close to the center of the range. I'll post my spreadsheet and the other gory details later... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
