Netters
My name is Mike Geoghegan. I have been a member of KRNET for about 4 years. I have posted to the net on a few occasions but for the most part I have listened and gathered a great deal of information which I have used in the completion of my kr2. N47MG is a close to plans built kr2. About 4 years ago I rescued a boat stage project that had been sitting in a barn for 10 years. It was going to the dumps or my garage and since I was looking for a project to take up some of my spare time I put it in my garage. I had started down the road toward a private license in 1980 and got about 20 hours and solo when, due to children, work, and everything else I had to stop. Well now with the last child off to college I was ready to finally get that license. The kr project would keep me busy and when finished, I would have a plane to fly. For those of you who are not low time pilots I can make this post short and tell you that I am flying N47MG and I will be providing photos for everyone to see as soon as the weather in Vermont gets a little warmer. I hope that will be soon. The following is a recap of my experience getting my plane in the air with very little flight time in my log book. The project was a non modified tail wheel kr2 on retracts. I won't go into detail on the completion of the project except to say that I stuck to the plans and ended up with a dry weight of 598 lbs. There were a few things I did in the completion process that I would recommend to others. 1. Be sure to balance ailerons and elevator. The elevator balance is important because without it your elevator trim won't overcome the weight of the elevator. 2. Don't short change the importance of both aileron and elevator trim. I installed what was then Mac servos in the elevator and the very smallest one in the left aileron so I could see it off to my left. It is a 12 inch piano hinge with a piece of 12 x 2 inch sheet metal attached to the trailing edge of the aileron. The servos are controlled by the four buttons on the top of the stick. (also a Mac product) With the use of both trims I can fly this plane hands free for short periods of time. 3. The engine that came with the project was a 1700cc vw. It was mounted as a hand prop setup and it had a posa carb installed. I rebuilt the engine and when I got to the point of testing it I ran into a lot of trouble with the posa carb. Suffice to say that after many hours of testing I lost my patience. I bit the bullet and bought an Ellison. I also purchased an accessory case with starter and alternator. The Ellison is fantastic and the starter is much safer. Now to the hard part. I finished my project in September of 2002. Got the airworthiness certificate and it was ready for testing. I did some low speed taxi testing to maybe 25 mph but I didn't have my pilot certificate yet so I was not going to be able to fly it anyway. I found a test pilot with lots of tail wheel time that was willing to take a test flight. In October of 2002 he showed up for an inspection and a half hour later he got in and took off. The test went very well. Climbs, steep turns, stalls, and a picture perfect wheel landing. He made it all look very easy. The only thing I had to do was increase the surface area of the aileron trim so it could hold the plane level hands free. After the test flight I had to take my check ride and get my certificate. Once I did that I now had a tail wheel kr2 ready to fly. I know that there have been some conversations on the net about not needing a tail wheel endorsement to fly an experimental but you have to be a fool to think that you don't need any tail wheel experience to successfully fly one. Since the test pilot I used was not a CFI and I couldn't find anyone to give me the tail wheel experience I proceeded to do a lot of taxi testing myself. After about 6 hours of time trying to keep the tail up and the plane straight and almost loosing it on a number of occasions I did the smart thing and converted the plane to a tri gear. I purchased a Diehl nose gear assembly and I had a single piece Grove gear made up. I put Tracy O'Brian brakes on the gear and fabricated toe brake pedals to operate the hydraulics. The main gear installation was really pretty easy once the brackets were made up. After two or three taxi test sessions it was obvious that for me the change to tri gear was the right way to go. The plane felt very comfortable. It had familiar handling traits on the ground and I had no trouble keeping it straight under throttle. On the fourth taxi test everything felt so good at 50 that instead of slowing I followed through with a little more speed and back pressure. The plane absolutely leapt into the air. I corrected with a little forward pressure and within two oscillations I was climbing 700 fpm at 80mph. Talking about a thrill! I played with the trim as I was climbing and got settled so I wasn't holding the attitude with the stick. At this point I would like to voice my observations about pitch sensitivity. I only have about 100 hours logged mostly in a 152 but first hand experience can be very valuable. In my opinion the kr2 is not pitch sensitive. What I have found is that the kr2 is very stick sensitive. That is to say that I only use a fraction of stick to control the plane. I have found that if I trim properly I can fly with two finger tips on the stick. If the plane is not trimmed properly then I find myself using too much control input and end up over correcting. The plane responds so well that you can almost think about banking and it will. Now to bring you back to where I left you last. I was climbing out on the first flight. What a joy to feel the response of this plane. I spent some time at altitude trying different speeds and flight attitudes including some slow flight. Again, the trim control helped greatly. I did not feel comfortable trying any stalls but I did have a good idea of the stall speed from the first test flight. The big problem now was how do I land this very sensitive plane when I was used to the yoke of a 152. The answer is not very smooth and not very pretty. It was inevitable that I would end up over correcting on final. I was able to enter final at 80 mph but I was all over the place. The problem was that I kept telling myself "fly the plane" when I should have let it fly itself. All of my input was too much. Well, I made the runway and I made it to a full stop and I didn't have a heart attack but it was close. As I was rolling out one of the locals who was holding short, watching my landing, got on the radio and asked if it was my first flight. After my affirmative reply all he said was "It looks beautiful". I got out and kissed the ground. Every flight since then has been much better and I got a chance to grease one right in front of my CFI. Always a good thing to do. Here is a picture of N47MG when it was a tail dragger. Here is some data: Dry weight is 598 lb Engine is VW 1700cc Carb is Ellison EFS-2 Prop is a Sterba 52 x 42 Header tank only - 16 gal Fuel consumption is 3 to 3.5 gal per hr Climb is 700 fpm at 80 mph Max speed is 130 mph @ 3600 rpm Cruse is 115 mph @ 3200 rpm Landing approach @ 80 mph Numbers @ 70 mph Touch @ 60 or below No flaps or speed brake and not much float. Since it has been a very cold winter here in Vermont I have spent some time putting on wheel pants and doing misc. work as I wait for some good flying days. I hope to fly off the test hours this spring and by then I will really know more about the performance. I also hope to build a larger displacement VW and get some more speed out of her. Turbulence really moves this plane around a lot because it is so light. I'm not sure how long a period of time I could spend going fast and getting thrown around so much but on a smooth day I can see this plane going fast! I hope this has been helpful to those low time pilots trying to make some decisions on their projects and maybe it will help the high time pilots prepare for their first flights. Regards, Mike Geoghegan Moretown Vermont N47MG
