Spring time in the Southwest mountains makes for some interesting flying. I guess you're looking for a comparison of the ride in a KR vs the ride through the same turbulance in your Skylane. Once you get past worrying about every glued joint in the plane, the KR does surprisingly well in turbulance. It has a tendancy to move around more in all three axis than a Skylane, but the ride isn't significantly worse. At cruise it tends to react more in pitch than anything else, but that might be credited to the small tail on mine. Others with the larger tail probably offer more stability.
Since my forehead is so close to the canopy in my KR, banging my head on the canopy in turbulance is pretty common. Fortunately, my head is so close that it doesn't have much inertia when I hit the plexiglass. Further comments about the structural strength of my head will be unnecessary. ;o) At my home airport(LAM), the winds are typically blowing crossways to the canyons that parallel the runway which makes for severe up and downdrafts down final on a breezy day. The approach is usually much worse than the landing there. You just grit your teeth, try to keep the plane flying and headed towards the airport, then deal with the landing. It's a one way airport, so there are no go arounds. Once you're near the threshold, you are committed to land. I use a personal limit of 10 kt crosswind component as my comfort zone. I know I can do more with it, and have, but more than 10 kts can be challenging. I can't say that I've ever run out of aileron on landing, but have run out of rudder authority and have had to augment the steering with braking to keep it straightened out until I can get the tailwheel down. The challenging part seems to be the amount of time that the KR spends flying in ground effect while transitioning from flying to rolling. On a gusty day, that's when you get bit. The KRs with drag devices such as belly boards to help them speed up the transition from flight should have slightly better crosswind capability. -Jeff Scott Los Alamos, NM -- "John & Elaine Roffey" <jerof...@tir.com> wrote: Just a general question to those who do fly their KRs in wind, after getting the standard briefing that goes along with the type of crosswinds we are currently discussing, usually "moderate turbulence below 12,000", what kind of ride are we talking about here. The question arises after flying a C182RG (heavy) out of Scottsdale AZ last week, the winds were 010 20/G25 using runway 3. Not a large factor for this plane. The briefing included the usual "mod turb below 12" and I wanted to see how that felt in AZ after having flown allot of it here in MI. The take off was not unusual at all but the ride was as rough as I have ever had in any airplane. I hit my head on the roof a couple of times. It was definitely a below maneuvering speed flight that day. The landing was 1.7 HR later and the wind died to 010 15/G20 and was not a factor. I might not do that in a KR. Anyone else? John Roffey Sometimes KR2S builder Fort Gratiot, MI
