stunthanger.com
Building Tips and technical articles. => Building techniques => Topic started by: Peter Nevai on June 22, 2011, 09:48:19 AM
-
Whist pondering the pesky problem presented by the ugly wire used for landing gear, I realized that the offense was compounded in designs using trike gear. On tail dragger designs you can make neat gear doors and or flashy slick wheel pants treatments. The Carbon and Aluminum gear mounts actually get rid of the wire. Lovers of trike gear designs do not have that luxury. While we can fabricate gear doors for the main gear that can desguise the wire, the nose gear sticking right out front in plain sight poses a challange. I don't know about anyone else but wheel pants on a Trike looks absolutely stupid, especially fo the nose gear, they tend to break and fall off because the single nose gear usually takes the brunt of the abuse during landings and takoffs.
The solution I am going to go with are these neat Robart scale Plastic Strut landing gear wire covers. I have attached a PDF of the product. By adding some light weight Gear Doors I think It will go a long way of taking the ugly out of Tricycle Landing gear applications. Anyone else have a nice remedy? (Retracts not included?)
-
Carl Shoup used these devices to dress up the nose gear on his trike geared design. In addition, if my memory is correct, they were sprung and seemed to really smooth out the landings.
-
Cessna and Piper have been using wheel pants on tricycle gears for a very long time.
-
get retracts.........
-
It's also possible to use wheelpants and a skirt on the wire. I've done planes with trike gear and either used wheelpants and skirts or in one case doors on the wing gear and a double wheel on the front with skirt that looked kinda cool.
-
It's also possible to use wheelpants and a skirt on the wire. I've done planes with trike gear and either used wheelpants and skirts or in one case doors on the wing gear and a double wheel on the front with skirt that looked kinda cool.
I totally agree that double wheels would be really cool, I don't know if I want to incur the weight penalty out there in the nose. But if it turns out to need weight in the nose, thats the first thing I'll do.
-
The only nose gears that look good are the ones raked forward like a set of motorcycle forks.
-
I'm thinking about building Don Shultz's Avenger 76. Very slick looking trike gear canted forward on the nose with wheelpants and a fuse mounted main gear raked backward and with wheel pants. It's really very neat implementation.
-
The only nose gears that look good are the ones raked forward like a set of motorcycle forks.
Raked forward nose gear looks stupid. I prefer raked back.
Different strokes......