Build Progress Summary
It has been about four weeks since my last update. I have been somewhat distracted from the build over the last few weeks while attending to various non-building tasks and generally trying to accumulate a bit of domestic credit round the house.

That said I have managed to finally got the bottom skin glued onto the fuselage boat over this past weekend with the assistance of my son. I ended up making up a center frame to support the fuselage cross members and then used a combination of staples and weights to secure the skin into place while the glue cured. I am currently in the process of cleaning up the skin having already trimmed the edges and with just the final filling and sanding of the staple holes required before I seal the complete boat and then put it aside to make a start on the horizontal stabiliser.

I have also spent some time flying recently. Over the weekend of the 31st October - 1st November, I flew with a friend on a navigation exercise out of Aucklands North Shore airfield and we made our way down country to Tauranga for lunch. After lunch we flew on to visit one of New Zealands offshore islands which is also an active volcano. White Island is roughly 15 nautical miles off the coast and is about 2km by 1km in size. The day we chose to fly down was absolutely stunning and proved a good opportunity to exercise my navigation skills. I will add some photo's from the flight to the Miscellaneous page this coming weekend.

Goals For The Coming Week
- Finish trimming the lower fuselage skin.
- Fill the staple holes and sand them smooth.
- Seal the boat using two pot epoxy sealant.

Recent News off the KRNet
Last week saw the crash of a KR2 in Arizona after the engine lost power at about 300', apparently due to a fuel flow problems caused by a blockage in the fuel cap breather vent. The pilot put the aircraft down on a piece of nearby real estate where it skidded along for about 450 feet before hitting a earth berm and coming to rest on top of the berm with significant damage to the underside of the aircraft. Fortunatelty the pilot was able to walk away from the crash with just a nasty cut to the head but he is otherwise ok. A link to a news article can be found here.

Since the crash there has been some good discussion on the KRNet over the methods used for attachment of seat belt restraints in KR's. as it appears the standard restraint installation method published with the plans and used in the KR2 that crashed appears to have failed under the crash loads. The builder of the aircraft, who is working through the damage and assessing what is required to rebuild it, has reported that the glue joints of the shear web, to which the restraint was attached, did not fail but that the longerons physically broke where the rear shear web attachs to the longerons. A number of builders have offered up alternative methods of installng pilot restraints including Mark Langford who described the installation on his KR2S where the restraints are attached by cable to the main spar of the horizontal stabiliser. Needless to say I have been taking note of the comments being made.