In "KR Wheel Fire Write Up" Larry Flesner wrote:
>>With Mark having more than 1000 hours of KR time and surviving 3 off airport landings (that he has told us about), no one is going to question his ability to fly a KR......<<
It's actually about 1800 KR hours, but I'm a pretty slow learner, so maybe 100 hours is a better description of my KR skill level. I have another 175 hours in the Swift, as well as Cessnas, Champs, and other stuff I've rented or done biennial flight reviews in. I think three off-airport landings is about right, with three more "dead-stick" onto runways. It would only be two "off airport" if the airport on the sectional south of OSH hadn't been sold and planted in 7' tall corn since the last sectional update! That was the only airport anywhere around that I could make, given the low altitude required while leaving OSH during the "the show".
I-65 during rush hour was the first one, and the easiest one! Just overfly the traffic low (with some extra speed) so they all see you and slow down and stop, and then land really close to the rear of the car at the end of the traffic ahead.....and hope nobody's beneath you! Come to a stop, back the plane off the road, and let the traffic go by. That one was due to a broken crankshaft, as well as a few more, so you'd be CRAZY to take any kind of advice from me regarding engines! This kind of stuff is why you should practice slips to bleed off speed when you have to. And folks with a wide and long runway should be practicing using the least amount of runway possible, in case of short "foreign" runways, or something like a highway or field landing. And this is another reason you should be practicing stalls at various attitudes, so you'll know what your minimum speed is during "just such an emergency" (a Foghorn Leghorn quote) - "Fortunately, I keep my feathers numbered, for just such an emergency!"
I still find it challenging to land the KR2 on our 40' wide runway, mainly because I keep the nose way up to slow down quickly enough to get it stopped by the far end, so the cowling blocks my view. I never know exactly where I'm going to touch down on the runway, since it's so narrow I can't even see it or the edges once flared. I try to "slip it in" almost all the way to the ground to move the nose over to the right while bleeding off speed, but timing is everything......gotta make sure I'm straightened out before touch down, or things get a little crazy! Checking the logbook, I have right at 4200 landings. I practice a lot!
And there's also the fact that the Rand Robinson KR2 bubble canopy is so tight that I can't lean my head far enough left to see the runway when I'm still 20' up...or probably even 10' high. Given the relatively low speed and nose up attitude, I almost always three point it on this runway.....I just plop it down there. For that reason, I don't put any more than 25 psi of air in the tires. If I land any faster I risk running out of runway. Outward visibility would be a lot better with a Dragonfly canopy on it instead. Yes, the Dragonfly canopy is wider than the KR2 fuselage, but that allows the builder to pull the bottom mating surfaces inward for a nice fit to the fuselage, and DOES leave extra room out the sides so you can lean your head out a bit further for a better view of the runway. It also provides a much better view at the lower front corners of the canopy, something the bubble just can't do due to its curvature at those corners. I know this first hand because Jim Hill put a Dragonfly canopy on his KR2, and it had a much better view out than the bubble.
I'm hoping to weld up an exhaust system for N891JF (the KR2) soon, so I can fly it to the Gathering. The previous exhaust fell apart when I removed it to rebuild the VW engine. The VW's been finished and installed for months,, so it's a matter of welding up this exhaust system. The Revmaster exhaust doesn't have a prayer of fitting this particular KR2, so I'll have to build it from scratch from stainless steel....time consuming and a very big pain in the butt! We'll see how it goes. If anybody has a GPASC four into one exhaust system they'd sell, let me know offline!
Mark Langford m...@n56ml.com http://www.n56ml.com Huntsville, AL
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