To Darren and Robert who asked about my retracting nose wheel. I don't have any photos of the arrangement, only autocad drawings. It's a simple arrangement. A hinge point is located beneath and just aft of the firewall. The nose gear strut is a portion of the Safari/Astro van spring that just happens to almost match the curve of the bottom of the fuse. (Finding this out is what started me moving to design the retract system.)
The wheel is attached to the bottom of the spring with a common self aligning caster to ensure it remains streaming aft while in flight and while being retracted. There is no manual steering. The wheel retracts into a box that is located forward of the front spar. The retract system is entirely manual, a simple push/pull system with a bellcrank. To keep the nose spring strut from collapsing up and forward when the plane's on the ground, the top of the strut hits a bracket that is part of the retract hinge/mounting system. There are tubes running from this point to the motor mount like the Diehl nose gear mount. When retracted the hinge/mounting plate is hidden by the cowl, just a small portion of the castor is showing, and the leaf spring kinda blends in with the fuse bottom. There will be simple, slit rubber 'doors' the close the wheel box when the wheel is retracted. The reason I moved away from retracting the mains also is that the nose gear alone can produce 30% and 40% percent more drag than the mains combined. That's because it's dragging in the prop wash. You should know that my KR-2S is 10% longer, 10% wider, and 10% deeper than stock. I've got tons of room in it. I'm 5-10/170 lbs, and a buddy and I sitting in the plane have to lean towards each other to touch shoulders. The box ahead of the spar that the nose wheel retracts into isn't even noticeable while entering and exiting the plane nor when sitting in it. I redrew the fuse truss so the top longeron is flat now that it's in boat form and there are curves in the fuse sides, bottom, turtle and aft moldings that makes it kinda look like a Lancair. The widest portion of the fuse is at the shoulder and carries forward a bit. Please feel free to contact me at [email protected] if you'd like to chat about this more. Peter
