Hello Craig and Netters, Having closely followed the list for almost 7 years now it's been a huge learning experience. One thing that seems to be working well for a majority of the flying KRs is simplicity. Craig, your project seems quite ambitious and would certainly be a work of art when completed; however would it really be worth hundreds of hours of cosmetic work and possibly corrupting flight characteristics? To try and make a KR something it is not seems counter-productive but that is just the opinion of a dreaming simpleton. It seems like if you were to take a Spitfire replica design and make mods to the canopy and such you would wind up with a much more true to shape bird that would not have flight parameters compromised. The wing shape, tail shape, and so forth are much more similar with a SMS Mk 26 than a KR. I think you would have more luck morphing from a different airframe and most importantly still have a safe bird to fly.
Seeing as one of the best performing KRs out there is still in primer cosmetics would be one of the last things to be of concern. If you go adding all that weight (5 blade prop for instance) or any retract system you're going to have a plane that performs poorly and as a result exhibit much less of a safety margin. Should an accident occur as a result of such not only will all the work have been for naught, it will have been much more expensive. When you look at any of the nice KRs out there to corrupt them from their form would almost be a sacrilege. Look at Richard Shirley's KR1, Troy Pettiway's KR2, Jeff Scott's KR2, Larry, Joe, Mark J., Mark L. KR2s (and I know I'm leaving out a lot of folks) and there is a purity to those planes. They are in and of themselves awesome examples of functional art. OK, returning to lurk mode. Fly safe everyone. Bart Ferguson Houston, TX On Oct 17, 2010, at 6:26 PM, Craig Williams wrote: > My Bad. I opened my big mouth without running the numbers first. > Here are the > #'s
