Dr John Skorczewski wrote: >> I`ve read your web page concerning your extensive and detailed >> modifications. I saw how you widened the cockpit by using the dragonfly >> canopy. How wide CAN one go, practically speaking?<<
The Dragonfly is a pretty floppy canopy until you mount it in a frame. When you set it on a table unsupported it spreads out to probably a foot wider than a KR is, but it's splayed out a bit. I think the Dragonfly is supposed to be about 7-9 inches wider than a KR2/KR2S (don't ask me WHERE it's wider though). I remember thinking that 6" wider than a KR would look just fine. I got the Dragonfly idea from Jim Hill. His KR2 was stock width, and the canopy actually comes in about an inch or so on each side so that the canopy is wider than the top of the cockpit, so there's plenty of room to stretch a Dragonfly canopy. The Rand Robinson canopy is 50% thicker than the Dragonfly (and therefore heavier) and therefore somewhat less flexible, for what that's worth. The Pulsar canopy works nicely also, as Alan Buzza's Aussie KR2 demonstrates. I'm sure there are others. Larry Flesner used a Pulsar canopy as well, although it was chopped up and reconstituted in a different form (see http://mysite.verizon.net/flesner/ ). There are lots of ways to make a canopy work. If you do the roll bar/gullwing thing, you can add several inches in the form of a center divider to mount the gullwing doors to. See Troy Petteways at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/troy/ for a great example of that, or Dan Heath's at http://krbuilder.org/, to name two, and Larry's as well. On another topic, anybody out there that's contemplating building a KR to the plans width needs to go sit in one with a passenger. It'll quickly become obvious that somebody's arm is going to have to have to be chopped off to fit in there comfortably, or maybe even to close the canopy. Overlapping shoulders works, but that's nowhere near my definition of comfortable. I should alsom mention that if you follow the plans, the widest part of the fuselage is around your knees, which makes no sense from a creature comfort standpoint or aerodynamic standpoint. Make the widest point around your shoulders and then add some more and you'd be surprised how much room you'll have. How much wider? My wife and I stood an inch from the wall and stood shoulder to shoulder and measured the overall width, then added 3". One inch of clearance all around works great for us. For some wider people it's a tighter squeeze though... Mark Langford N56ML "at" hiwaay.net website at http://www.N56ML.com --------------------------------------------------------
