Well said Mark, I fly a nose dragger, as I do not have a tail wheel endorsement as yet. But I have been in some bad ( strong) X wind landing in the KR, as my home strip has only one runway. The nose wheel set up handles them very well.
Phil Matheson SAAA Ch 20 www.phils...@50megs.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Langford" <n5...@hiwaay.net> To: "KRnet" <kr...@mylist.net> Sent: Monday, March 29, 2010 2:01 AM Subject: Re: KR> tri gear and taildragger KRnetHeads, Just because there has to be one in every crowd, almost all of my landings are 3 point. That's mainly because of my short strip, and I can't afford to touch down 10 mph faster and burn up all that runway, even with my split flaps. No, the KR can't do a full stall landing, but it really doesn't have to. When you slow it down, it drops. You just have to time it so it isn't dropping really fast when you arrive at the touchdown point. Whether the nose is way up in the air or not is immaterial, and the speed difference between "almost stalled" and "full stall" is not large. I like to three point mine because when you hit the ground, you're done flying. No more excursions back into the air with reduced control effectiveness...all you have to do is steer, which is easy. Maybe I'm just thick, but I've not seen any of the scary stuff that I keep hearing about tailwheel airplanes. Troy Petteway once told me that the KR is the best behaved tailwheel plane on the planet, and although I've only flown a few others, I suspect he's right about that. The main reason I built a tailwheel version is because I fly to my father's grass strip often, and I wanted that extra 10-12 mph speed, the improved efficiency that goes with that, the special (and often restrictive) engine mount, and the $400 savings (and maintenance hassles) over the nose wheel. I can't argue that the tri-gear isn't easier to land (purely from the physics of a self-stabilizing design), improved taxi visibility, and I think they even look a more substantial airplane (which might help to get your wife in there). I'm not going to give anybody a hard time about deciding to go with tri-gear. It's like most things in life, a trade-off situation where intelligent decisions are deliberated based on one's personal preferences and situation. Having said that, when I build another one it'll definitely be a taildragger... Mark Langford N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website at http://www.N56ML.com -------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at http://www.maddyhome.com/krsrch/index.jsp to UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@mylist.net please see other KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html
