Joe Horton wrote: > things went to crap. I tried to just hold steady and fly it on to > the runway.
I'm probably the last one on the planet that should be offering advice on how to land a KR, judging by my performance at Moontown yesterday, in front of at least twenty pilots, but it sounds like you did the same thing I did the first time around....you were too fast and still thoroughly flying when you touched down. If it'd been a tail dragger, you'd have "bounced" 25 feet in the air instead of only 10! I'm still working to figure my plane out, which is a little different than anybody else's with the split flaps. What I've been doing lately (which seems to work, unless somebody's watching) is come in fairly steep at about 70 mph with very little power, as if it's an emergency landing, and then maybe 50 feet before I "hit", I lower the nose a little (as opposed to raising it to flare) and pick up just enough speed to "fly it on". As soon as I touch down, the stick goes forward to plant it (you'd have to try really hard to nose it over enough to hurt the prop). It's a lot easier to hit the target if you're gliding steeply, and it's good insurance if the engine quits on final. I think about stuff like that a lot. Yesterday I landed at Moontown too fast and I knew it, and was rewarded with at least three separate landings, which is not a good thing on a 2200' runway. That one would probably better be described as a "glancing blow", rather than beating the runway into submission. I assume you've gone up to altitude and done a stall or two to nail down what your airspeed indicator says when it stalls, right? As long as you stay sufficiently above that number you ought to be OK. I think I've heard Troy say 1.2x stall speed should be KR landing speed. Don't listen to me though...I'm still trying to figure it out myself. The good news is that you've already learned that the KR is pretty strong. Just try not to take out any runway lights. I've managed to dodge them so far. I did the south Alabama trip again yesterday, and put almost 4 hours on the plane at full throttle, mostly at around 10,000'. The Corvair is running incredibly smooth. Later this week I'm going to fly to Little Rock with Jim Hill to deliver his KR to its owner and then bring him back, and then to Corvair College in Florida on Nov 11th. See y'all there... Mark Langford, Huntsville, Alabama see KR2S project N56ML at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net --------------------------------------------------------------
