Just in case someone can find it interesting, here is my report on my first "semi-solo" on the KR2S.
I took some bicycle hours on a Kitfox before, and faced the KR two weeks ago. The first hour was about taxiing with the tail down, to get acquainted with such condition. The second hour was about giving a bit more throttle in order to raise the tail and control the plane in high speed taxiing. The aim is to let me handle the plane in the most difficult condition, that is after the touch down. After having reached acceptable handling, yesterday, finally, we went in flight. I sat on the left and was the only one to have throttle and brakes. The instructor (the owner of the aircraft) could easily reach the throttle lever, while the braking was entirely up to me. Slight wind from the right, but the front component forced us to use a slightly downhill runway. The standard pattern has been constantly executed at at 60 mph, lowering the air-brake before turning base. Strange to notice, lowering the belly board made the nose momentarily raise. The airplane is indeed very responsive and easy to handle in this phase. Once reached the ideal prolonging of the runway centerline we touched over the numbers and here a completely new life started, for me. The aircraft touches on the main wheels and one has to keep the tail up and wait for the speed to decrease so that the tail goes down before applying the brakes. This made me a bit upset because waiting for the right moment to brake while the plane runs eating the runway is not a good sensation. Altough Alberto, the instructor/owner can easily come to a complete stop in less than 400 meters, we had to eat the whole runway (750 meters) and I could brake only in the last 100. About the aircraft: it is built per plan, with just minor modifies to improve some excessively simple features (tail wheel, etc.); take off requires a 150 meters run (really good). We checked its weight last week and it scored an amazing 207 kg without fuel. Ciao! Cristiano. Rome (ITALY) http://www.aviocris.com/kr2s -- Cristiano - [email protected]
