Build Progress Summary
I have had a very busy week this past week. I have managed to get the fuselage boat completed and sealed with epoxy primer and put away in my ceiling storage rack. I have also now made a start on the Horizontal stabiliser having completed the marking out all three HS spars and planing the forward spar to shape. With a bit of luck I will be able to complete the other two spars by the end of the upcoming week.

Note that I will not be working on the project this coming weekend as my wife and I are heading down to Christchurch for the weekend. My wife has a meeting/workshop she needs to attend and I am tagging along for the ride. I am hoping to catch up with Robin Macdonald while I am down in Christchurch so I can take a look at his project. I will take a few photo's and publish them next week.

I was looking back over my construction notes today and noted that Monday the 9th of November was the one year anniversary of my start on the actual build for the aircraft. I have tallied up the hours I have worked on the build over the last twelve months and it comes to a grand total of 475hrs. Not a bad effort. If I can average 450-500 hours a year for the next 4-5 years I think I have a fairly good chance of completing the build in this time. (All things being equal of course.)

Goals For The Coming Week
- Complete the shaping of the centre aand rear horizontal stabiliser spars.
- Cut out the rib templates for the HS.
- Order the parts for the "Dr Dean" hinges.

Recent News off the KRNet
There have been a couple of interesting posts on the KR Net this past week. Fred Bulla, who owned the second KR to crash at the Mt Vernon Gathering posted a note to say he is back in action and to say thanks to those who had helped him out. He had owned the KR for 22 years but made the mistake of running out of fuel just short of MVN. He is very lucky to have survived the crash given the aircraft nosed in after hitting some trees.

The other posting that caught my eye tis week was from Larry Flesner and was to do with the determining the Max Gross weight of a KR2. Larry gave a very clear explanation of how he calculated the gross weight of his aircraft. His rule of thumb is you take the empty weight, add the weight of the heaviest pilot possible while staying in the C.G. range, add the weight of full fuel (if that is possible with a heavy pilot and stay within the C.G. range), add baggage allowance (while staying in the C.G. range) , add maybe ten pound or so, and make that your max gross weight. That should make you "legal" in all load conditions. The gross weight of his KR is 1350 pounds.

He then added a note that as the gross weight of the aircraft increases, the structural G rating goes down. He then gave an excellent example to support this. (The KR2 has a design G rating of +/- 7 G's at 800 pounds. That computes to 7 x 800 = 5600 pounds. 5600 divided by 1350 computes to a 4.15 G rating when flown at 1350 pounds gross weight.)