The paper describes experimental work that demonstrates the use of repetitive control to attenuate radial vibrations of a variable speed-rotor. The experiments were performed on a rotor test rig having a 3-kg rotor supported by journal bearings. The first bending resonance of the rotor shaft (i.e. the critical speed) was approximately 50 Hz. The objective was to control the radial response at the rotor midpoint by using an actuator located outside the bearing span. A novel aspect of the controller design is that the length ofthe control output vector of the repetitive controller was updated as a function of the speed of rotation. The speed of rotation determined the required delay time and the repetitive filter length that approximately matches with the delay time. The results obtained were comparable to those achieved in earlier studies with feedforward compensation methods. The best results were achieved when the frequency of rotation enables an integer ratio between disturbance period and sample rate.