I bought G-BLDN back at the beginning of the year, and have been pottering around for eight months sorting a few problems, and inventing a few others ( don't ask me why I failed to lash down the canopy before I tried to trailer her to the airfield ).
She is almost 20 years old, and was rebuilt a couple of years back after a landing hiccup. Finally at the end of August, I had her fit for permit inspection, and then had her flight tested. A friend of mine with lots of hours on a Taylor Monoplane did the test, and he was very happy with the performance. I had not flown for over a year, so the last Saturdays and today I went and had an hour in a 150 to at least get back in the groove. After today's 6 circuits, I went up to the farm strip where I keep the KR2, and intended to do some fast taxi runs - did not want to fly, as I was planning to fly to a longer ( but today unavailable ) strip. I did 3 fast runs taking the plane up to about 45 knots just to the point where she got light, then chopping the throttle. Wind was about 6 knots 40-50 degrees off runway heading. On the fourth run, I let her go a bit faster, and suddenly I was in the air, I again cut the throttle and settled back. I could not be certain I was gonna have her stopped before the end of the strip, so I forewalled and took off, just followed all the advice I have gained from this list and climbed away at 70 knots. I then tooled around for 25 mins before deciding I would have to land sometime, so did a test 65 knot decent and headed back to the strip. I lowered full flap at 75 knots and then set up a 70 knot approach, I found that speed control was very easy - much better than a 150. I brought the speed back to 60knots at about 100ft, and managed to get into the flare 50 yds into the runway. she did take a long time to touch down, probably 300 yds. That was too easy, lets try again so pushed in throttle and climbed away. I got to 1500ft, and noticed that she would not do more than 80 knots - ahh forgot to retract flaps ( what checks ? ). Poodled around for another 15 mins, and decided sun is getting very low and almost straight in line with the runway so time to go home. This time I set up the approach at about 65 knots, and again found she just did as she was told. Again a good landing, and came to a stop in around 700 yds. Yep folks, I had the BIG GRIN, that was fun, and I have to say she flies beautifully. She is very easy to fly, anybody who learned to fly on a 5000 hour cessna will be amazed with just how precise they handle, effortless. Thank's everybody for all the contributions that allowed me to go flying and know exactly what to expect. To all those builders and buyers, I would like to say "your gonna love it". Pete
