NetHeads, I finally got around to reading the February 2004 issue of Kitplanes, and stumbled across Barnaby Wainfan's Wind Tunnel column, "CAUTION! Modifications Ahead".
This article is a result of his conversation with Justin, as I recall. His exact words to KRnet were "I was speaking with Barnaby Warfan (incorrect spelling) about the new airfoil today. He did alot of articles about the KR back in the 70's and he isn't for this airfoil very much, but he also stated he didnt know much about it." I should be honored, I guess, to have been mentioned in the resulting article (although not by name), and I'm a little surprised that nobody's brought it up. You guys should read it (part of it's at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/barnaby.gif ), and I agree with just about every word of it. One thing I'd like to point out though is that I've never said the new airfoil will make your KR more stable, merely that Troy says his is now more stable than before, and I always caveat it with "but he also changed the horizontal stab and elevator at the same time". Anybody that thinks I've misrepresented this is free to let me know, but I don't think I have. Also, in the case of the KR, I still think that "slightly" increased drag at very high angles of attack is a plus. His point of running out of runway while doing a go around misses one fact, and that is that with the higher drag on landing, you wouldn't be as far down the runway in the first place, so you'd have that much more runway left than you'd have had with the stock airfoil anyway. In my book, that's a wash. Of course, if you have a lot of power, it's a non-issue. Otherwise, takeoff distance is rarely a problem with a KR, but landing distance is. If you landed there, you're going to have room to take off from there. Just thought I'd show y'all this article and clarify those two issues he has with it. The article he's mentioning is the one at http://www.krnet.org/as504x/ for you new guys. And to answer the next question, only the two planes mentioned in the article are flying with the new airfoil to date, as far as I know, but that will change shortly... Mark Langford, Huntsville, AL N56ML "at" hiwaay.net see KR2S project at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford
