Somebody mentioned fuselage angles on gear the other day. At a KR Gathering I measured a few taildragger airplanes:
Dean Selby's KR2S was 8.9 degrees at the longerons, leading edge of wing was 20.5" above the ground Steve Bennett's KR1.5 was 8.6 degrees, lading edge 22.25" above the ground Rich Siefert's KR2S (with stock retracts) was 9.3 degrees, leading edge 18.5" Tommy Waymack's (fixed gear, I think) was 9.2 degrees, leading edge 20" Mine sits at 9.2 degrees, Diehl gear. I've made some extended gear legs that I intend to mount before installing gear leg fairings and wheel pants, that will extend my main gear 3" (see the middle of http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/kgear.html ). I did some more test flights Saturday morning with the SmartTool, and made a few more angular measurements at various flight regimes. They are posted near the bottom of the list (before the tufting photos) at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford/performance/ , but here they are to save you the trouble of going there: a.. 2050 rpm is the minimum RPM that my plane will continue in level flight, and that's without flaps in the lower 80's. The fuselage is at a 10 degree angle in this configuration (tested at 6000'). a.. Climbing out at 100 mph IAS wide open (3500 RPM), the fuselage angle is 8.1 degrees (the plane sits at 9.2 on the ground) a.. At engine idle at 80 mph indicated airspeed (landing configuration), the fuselage is at a 6.8 degree angle with flaps down, 8.2 degrees with flaps up. At touchdown the way I normally land, fuselage angle is around 5.2 degrees, on average. a.. Wide open at 1500' at 172 mph true airspeed, the fuselage is at a .5 degree angle (nose up). Mark Langford, Harvest, AL see homebuilt airplane at http://www.N56ML.com email to N56ML "at" hiwaay.net
