FreeBird plans will also provide instrument panel templates, electrical schematics, fuel system layouts, etc, all for free download. There are no "gotcha's with FreeBird. No private information is harvested from visitors or those who download plans or drawings. We're just trying to share the joy of building and flying your own sweet-flying, fast, economical, and fuel efficient airplane.
We have secured the https://www.freebirdplans.org website and are now working the CAD model (with help from another KRnet member), and once we have a few drawings we can "write to", we'll start the process of writing the manual. This manual will be in PDF form for easy download, as will the larger D, E, and maybe even F size drawings that will be used as construction drawings and templates. These can be easily printed at Kinko's or you favorite large print shop. Airfoil templates are already available at http://www.krnet.org/as504x/
FreeBird is not a giant leap of faith into the wild blue yonder...but the benefactor of many builders' experience building, modifying, experimenting, and proving that these planes fly just fine, many for decades. The Freebird's predecessor is the KR2S, which is what these planes are currently called. They were built from very sparse plans, with some very vague dimensions, and equally sparse instruction, such as "fabricate aft deck similar to forward deck". Many dimensions had to be scaled from a technical artist's side view....the aft deck, for example. After months of this kind of "interpretation", the builder starts feeling like an aircraft designer, and makes changes to suit himself. The next builder comes along, and thanks to the many builder sites at www.krnet.org, builds upon what others have done, and tweaks it a little more. Before you know it, you have the FreeBird!
It's worth mentioning that if this plane doesn't fit you or your mission, you can tweak it into your preferred chariot, just like many other builders before you have done. Because we're dealing with a wood frame, with home-brewed foam and fiberglass cloth making up most of the rest, you can build that wooden frame however you want to....the effort to "cover" it all with fiberglass is the same, no matter what the shape, length, height, whatever. An example of that is the vertical sides. You'll see in the model that the sides are vertical in this 3D CAD model (below), for ease of construction and ease of 3D modeling. KR plans call for tapering the fuselage sides outward from the bottom to the top, so the lower part of pilot/passenger area is narrower at the bottom and wider at the top. This allows more arm and shoulder room where you need it, but it's not needed for out-stretched legs, as well as decreasing frontal area a bit for slightly better speed. So if you like the look and feel of tapered sides, by all means....build it that way (as almost all KRs have been built over the years). The only "cost" of the tapered sides is a lot of odd-angled gussets at each intersection, and it is labor intensive....making many trips back and forth to sand a tad more here and there, and pitching a few in the trash and starting over sometimes. Straight sides are a breeze by comparison, if you want to just get on with it before your enthusiasm level expires. This flexibility is optional...do what you want. But the tapered sides look better, no doubt. As for CAD models, it's far easier to model the sides vertical rather than tapered, which comes closer to explaining why it's modeled this way!
Here's the current state of the model, as of late September, 2022. From this model, the fuselage frames have been extracted as the basis of the first side frame drawing.
FreeBird Preliminary Design Criteria
