Hi Jeff! Interesting that yours only opens a bit, I had it open once while I was still doing high speed taxing, At about 50 mph, with the tail up, it opened up to about 30 deg causing zero forward visibility. Somehow I thought at speed it would not open as much but it did! The violent pitch down, caused by the blanking the airflow over the stab, was the scary bit. There was also a violent vibration with the canopy open, felt like buffeting.
The hinges on my canopy are quite a way forward, it opens on "arms", I got the impression that a lot airflow got in underneath the canopy, maybe that caused it to "fly"? It sat, quite stable but vibrating, in the open position. The problem with the original latch on VYZ was that you could not visually confirm that it was latched, you had the try the canopy and if it stayed closed you assumed that it was ok, and we all know what happens when you assume something..... The canopy on my other KR2, ZU-CGR, opens to the side, it think if it should open it would simply be ripped off, not good! At least on CGR you can see that it is latched! I agree it is important to be able to unlatch it from the outside, you never know when you might need that. Fly safe, Rudi On 10/9/2012 4:43 PM, Jeff Scott wrote: > Wow Rudi! That was quite a harrowing experience! Glad you had a good > outcome. > > I don't know why the canopy on my KR would react any differently, but I have > forgotten to latch it a few times. My forward tilting canopy will raise up > about 1/8 of an inch at the back and is stable in that position. It won't > push open and you can't pull it that last tiny bit to close it. > > > The first time I did that I noticed a cool breeze being sucked in under my > legs, but didn't notice why until I landed at my destination 1 1/2 hours > later and found that I had left the locking pins out of the canopy. > > However, Rudi's story really emphasizes the need to make sure your canopy is > properly latched. It also emphasizes the need for a passive or secondary > latch on canopies should they come unlatched in flight. One last thing about > engineering a canopy system is that one should be able to unlatch it from > outside for rescue. This is something I did not do when I built my KR, but > is also somthing that crosses my mind every time I drop the locking pins into > my canopy from inside. > > -Jeff Scott > Los Alamos, NM > > ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2013.0.2677 / Virus Database: 2591/5797 - Release Date: 09/28/12 Internal Virus Database is out of date.
