KRNetHeads, This morning was planned as the kids' first flights in the KR. First 10 year old Claire got the first turn, flying down to my father's farm in south Alabama, 230 miles to the south, with 12 year old son Jordan getting his first ride back. I was worried that the winds were going to be high when I got back, so I planned to get back just before sunset when things have usually settled down a little.
Yesterday I put the final touches on the "heater from hell", which put out an impressive amount of heat into the cabin. Just to be safe, I mounted one of those el cheapo button type of CO detectors in the panel just before we left. As I was warming the engine up at the end of the runway, Claire was asking what each instrument did, and every field of the EIS, etc. Then she got to the CO detector and said "Dad, it's already black". Not a good sign! So I taxied back to the hangar, duct taped my aluminum cover back over the inlet duct, ripped out the weatherstripping I put in last night, and off we went. It was a great trip down at 9500', and a gorgeously clear day. With the tailwind, we were doing 175-180 most of the way, and you could easily see 50 miles. It turns out that Claire can maintain heading and altitude better than I can, so she flew about half way down. That's kindof neat, because now I have an intelligent autopilot that can take over while I do stuff like take pictures ( http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/flights/051124038m.jpg ). The first landing attempt was a little hot, which resulted in a touchdown and a subsequent liftoff/glide that I thought wasn't going to end before the end of the 3600' grass runway, so I cleaned it up and went around for another attempt. The next one was pretty good. After lunch I gave the main farm hand a ride around the area. He's 185 pounds, so I wasn't too worried, and that worked out great. I really didn't notice much difference in the performance, but it may be that I'm oblivious. The landing was the best of the three, so maybe some extra weight helps! Next I flew Jordan back home, but this time with a stiff headwind. The best we could do at 8500' was 125 mph, so I came down to 6500' and got 130 or so. We barely made it back to M38 before dark. Another 10 minutes and I'd have landed somewhere else earlier. It was an airline approach, straight in (since I didn't have any time to waste), and it was a greaser. A perfect end to a perfect day. Funny thing was that neither of them did any kid of PIO (pilot induced oscillation) whatsover when they were flying the plane. I discovered that with the extra weight and full fuel, I finally get the middle of the trim range too. Looks like I need to alter my horizontal stab incidence so the trim is perfect when I'm by myself, and set it up to need down trim with the rare passenger. I measured it the other night, and somehow it's not the -.75 degrees that I thought it was...it's more like -.4 degrees, so -.75 may get me there after all. I got home two and a half hours ago, and Jeanie and Claire still aren't here. It's nice to have my own personal time machine. I guess it's time to go check all of my exhaust donuts... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
