> ----- Original Message ----- > > Maybe I AM blowing smoke and will inhale it later but I AM curious about > all the talk of adding drag to the KR to slow it down. > ?I have flown several low drag / clean aircraft without flaps and > never had any unnerving problems with landing. > ?My personal opinion banded on some experience is to fly the airplane > as intended. Get comfortable with the SLOWER SPEEDS and then determine what > / if anything else one needs or wants to add. THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH IN > AERODYNAMICS. > ?All aircraft have speeds that work best as they are intended. Whether > a larger engine or a set of drag inducing flaps or belly board one MUST > ALWAYS REALIZE THE CHANGE will affect something else. > ?Doran > ?N186RC > ?kr2owner at email.co.
I was thinking the same way when I built my KR. ?I flew it 500 hrs with no flaps, belly board, or any other deployable drag. ?What I found over the years is that as I kept improving the plane with incremental drag reductions, the plane was getting more difficult to land. ?I was spending too much time over the runway transitioning from flying to rolling. ?At 500 hours, I did some major renovations to the plane <http://jeffsplanes.com> to include a significantly larger tail and the addition of flaps. ?To me, it was shocking as to how much easier this plane is to land with some kind of deployable drag. ?I have put another 500 hours on the plane since I added the flaps and have continued with my drag reduction improvements. ?It is really rare that I ever land this plane without flaps now that they are on there. I don't think there was much question that I could fly the plane well in it's original configuration. ?(OK, some of you may think I suck as a pilot :o) ?What I discovered after adding flaps and a larger tail is that the plane was much easier to land. ?By making it easier to land, I found that I was much more comfortable landing the plane in more challenging wind conditions. ?Since I could land under more challenging conditions, I was flying the plane a lot more and was very comfortable flying off to other places without having to worry about changing wind conditions at my destination airport or the often times challenging wind conditions getting back into my one way in, one way out, 7000' high on a mesa home airport. ?Adding flaps and a larger tail to my plane simply made my plane so I could use it a more. -Jeff Scott Los Alamos, NM
