> I think the belly board is the only way to go. Simple and the last thing you > need when landing is more lift generated by flaps.
I'm not sure if I believe that, because no airplanes would have flaps if that were the case. The big thing that flaps give you (besides free drag) is they lower the landing speed by 5 mph (in my case). That's got to be good for something. I look at the extra lift as basically meaning that I'm flying a lighter bird, so my landing speed can be slower. I will agree that belly boards are easy to install and are quite effective, but they won't give you the 5 mph lower landing speed. That's not to say that some day I may show up with a belly board TOO though. Yesterday I did a little glide testing with and without flaps. Glide ratio is about 11:1 without them at best glide speed (80 mph or so) clean, and 9.5:1 with flaps. My flaps only drop 30 degrees due to lack of geometrical room under my seats for the jack screw to operate, and lack of foresight as to where my torque tube is located (which limits bellcrank length to exactly what it is now). If I had 60 degrees of split flaps, I'd have a real speed brake. I'll fix that one of these days though. Something else I determined yesterday is that propwash must be the problem with my static system, not proximity of the wing or tire. I put a 10" extension on the static tube and it made no difference. Readings were way off, so I pulled the hose off after I leveled off, which opened the static line to the cockpit interior, and everything started reading more accurately. I did a little sanding on my wing, and when I fired up the engine it blew the dust off 2' out from the stub wing junction. My static/pitot tube is at the stub/outer wing junction, just like the plans call for, but it ain't working for me! Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
