Hey Joe N6399U has a belly board installed. While I don’t know the “exact” dimensions of it off the top of my head, it is probably 10-12” in length, and the width is basically the entire underside of the aircraft.
Mine has holes in it as well, which doesn’t seem to reduce its effectiveness at all. Stall speed is about the same with/without the belly board extended or not (50-60mph). I’ve never flown a KR with flaps, so I don’t have a baseline comparison, but the belly board definitely adds a lot of drag which helps slow you down a lot when coming in to land, and also on the landing rollout. One side effect, however, is that it gives a lot of nose up pitching tendency when it is extended. It’s not as bad when flying solo with the CG still pretty far forward, however if flying with a passenger, with the speed brake fully extended, ensure there is enough nose DOWN trim, otherwise the plane will pitch up on its own, which can be a little dangerous. If this is the case (running out of nose down trim), you can always just land with the speed brake in, however you’ll just have a slightly longer landing rollout. I also don’t recommend deploying it when landing in a crosswind: just like with flaps, it is very easy to get blown away if you get too slow. In this case, I just leave it retracted. I treat the belly board just like a set of flaps, and try not to deploy it above 100mph (the white arc on my airspeed indicator), however I have had it deployed at about 120-130mph and it held up just fine. It is very strong. Overall; it is a worthy tool to have, and I feel is more simple than installing flaps. Hope all is well! V/R Sam Spanovich N6399U 74S, Anacortes WA _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/. Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html. see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@list.krnet.org
