Maybe there's a misconception about lifting off in a KR. I can only
speak to taildraggers, but before my first flight (after several
introductory flights and another hour of right seat KR stick time), Troy
Petteway told me that all I had to do was loosely hold the stick and
gently follow it, give it full throttle, and the tail would eventually
come up, and then when it was ready, the plane would take off all by
itself! If you just want to get the tail up or taxi test, you need to
be a little more proactive, and give it some nose down stick after the
tail comes up to keep the nose level or down a bit, to keep the plane
from flying unintentionally. I can't speak to tri-gear KRs, but I would
think they are very similar.
Some folks dis me for saying that I did something like 60 high speed
taxi runs back and forth on the 6000' strip at KMDQ before I ever flew
it, but you can rest assured I knew exactly how to get the tail up and
down, and under control, before I ever took to the sky. My practice
started out on calm days and graduated to slightly more cross-windy
days, and I didn't fly it until I felt like I had that under complete
control. I can't imagine the pressure of a first landing having done
none of that, especially after the tense and potentially harrowing
experience of flying the plane for the first time.
Taxi testing also gave me the chance to verify the airspeed indicator
was operating correctly, and what it was reading while I was tail up and
near takeoff speed, because that's pretty close to where you want to be
when landing....just a bit slower. Another piece of unsolicited advice
is to only make the first flight on a dead calm day, probably most
likely to happen in the early morning, and not into the sun, obviously.
Then gradually work up to the more breezy stuff on future flights. If
this all sounds like being over-cautious, consider going to buy a KR
somewhere, and crawling into one that you've never flown, with zero KR
experience....and you'll understand why so many KRs are damaged or
destroyed on first flights by an inexperienced pilot.
Enough of my babbling for now....
Mark Langford
m...@n56ml.com
http://www.n56ml.com
Huntsville, AL
________________________________
-Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html
-Change list delivery options at
https://list.krnet.org/list/krnet.list.krnet.org/ Affinity List Info Board
-Search recent KRnet Archives at
https://list.krnet.org/empathy/list/krnet.list.krnet.org/
-Search John Boyea's decades of archive at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/
