Sig Twister Landing Gear

[Peter in Fairfax, VA]

I have a 42 ounce Sig Twister with an O.S. LA 46.  The wire landing gear is a little loose, even though the gear clips are holding the wire close to the fuse.  Essentially, the wires rotate, allowing the wheels to point various directions.

Some questions:

1.  Does the stock landing gear, 1/8" wire, consist of a single piece of 1/8" wire, or two pieces of 1/8" wire?

2.  If it is two pieces of 1/8" wire that plug into the profile fuse, how is the socket that accepts the wire constructed? Does each wire have its own socket?  Is there metal tubing or hardwood involved?

3.  What is a good way to secure the gear?

My ideas:

1. Drill a hole in a short piece of maple engine bearer stock as a socket, then inlay that into the fuse.

2. Discard the wire LG and go with a bolt-through dural gear I have.

Thoughts?  Seems like this is a common problem.  Magician has the same issue.

thanks,

Peter

[Dane Martin]

I did the bolt through Dural. Lasted longer than the plane

[James Holford]

I drilled and plugged the hole with a dowel. Then drilled again.. put a brass sleeve in the hole and mounted the gear. Rock solid.

 Altho if I were to do it again Id put aluminum profile gear

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

[bill bischoff]

If you like wire gear, bend a one piece gear that straddles the fuselage as shown. No airframe modification required!

[Dan McEntee]

   The two piece gear works well for several reasons, but the weak point is it will get loose after a lot of hard landings. This can be fixed two ways.
    1) The kits has the wire plugging into a length of 5/32" tubing. The hard landings make the ends of the wire work at the middle of the brass tubing and it gets loose. You can drill that tubing out, and replace it with a piece of 5/32" tube telescoped into a equal length of 3'16" tubing to double the wall thickness. This will last for many, many more flights, or maybe out last the airplane itself. Another way is to find some same size stainless steel or steel tubing with the same ID .

    2) the next method is to make two new landing gear legs with the top portion linger so it goes all the way through the fuselage. Then you install a single length of 5/32" tubing for each leg, right next to each other. After you get these installed and the landing gear straps put in, you will need to bend and tweak the landing gear some so the wheels both end up where they belong. This is pretty much a permanent fix.
     Type at you later,
     Dan McEntee
   

[Dane Martin]

If you like wire gear, bend a one piece gear that straddles the fuselage as shown. No airframe modification required!

Dang! That's cool as can be

[gene poremba]

 Dane, i did the same as Jamie did on his Twister, I drilled a hole where the landing gear wire goes into the fuse large enough to glue in a hardwood dowel. Then drilled a hole in it large enough for a piece of brass tubing to be inserted. Down where the strap goes over the gear leg, i inserted a piece of hardwood. I have several Twisters and dont have any gear problems....Gene

[Dane Martin]

Dane, i did the same as Jamie did on his Twister, I drilled a hole where the landing gear wire goes into the fuse large enough to glue in a hardwood dowel. Then drilled a hole in it large enough for a piece of brass tubing to be inserted. Down where the strap goes over the gear leg, i inserted a piece of hardwood. I have several Twisters and dont have any gear problems....Gene

Beautiful fleet. I'll have to do that on my next profile build. I got a profile nobler coming from Vintage Performance Models

[Dave Moritz]

Bill:

Pretty and nifty looking ship you've got there! Would you be so kind as to provide some basics specs (i.e, model name, engine, wingspan, line length).

Also, do you know if anyone sells those narrow wheels anymore? All I've got is the wide, foam ones with parallel sides (basically "slicks").

Thanks.

Dave Mo...

[bill bischoff]

That is a Brodak Flying Clown, set up for Clown Racing. It has an OZ 18TZ car engine, and goes about 100 mph on .015x60' lines. The wheels were from my stash from years ago. I too wish we could get good skinny wheels these days.

[Phil Spillman]

Hi All, 52 years ago while racing Goodyear, I had some trouble with 2 piece landing gears so I invented my way to fix it! I bend two pieces of wire as in a right and left legs, clean up the straight upper parts well, wrap with hair wire, silver solder the two together. Drill a hole large enough to accommodate the assembly and cast the assembly into the hole with epoxy or JB Weld! If it ever comes loose heat the leg assembly with your soldering iron and work it out of the profile fuselage. Clean off any residue and recast in the hole! You must make sure the leg assembly is straight before the epoxy sets up. When you are done with the frame remove it the LG assembly with the soldering iron and reinstall it in your next profile!

Phil Spillman

[Dennis Moritz]

I’ve been making profile gear out of salvaged Arf full fuselage gear. Cut in half at mounting flat. Rebend. Cut away extra metal. Mount with three holes. Pivot hole is on top. Gear can be bolted in two positions. Grass or asphalt. Maybe I figured the options right.

.
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[Tim Wescott]

   The two piece gear works well for several reasons, but the weak point is it will get loose after a lot of hard landings. This can be fixed two ways.
    1) The kits has the wire plugging into a length of 5/32" tubing. The hard landings make the ends of the wire work at the middle of the brass tubing and it gets loose. You can drill that tubing out, and replace it with a piece of 5/32" tube telescoped into a equal length of 3'16" tubing to double the wall thickness. This will last for many, many more flights, or maybe out last the airplane itself. Another way is to find some same size stainless steel or steel tubing with the same ID .

    2) the next method is to make two new landing gear legs with the top portion linger so it goes all the way through the fuselage. Then you install a single length of 5/32" tubing for each leg, right next to each other. After you get these installed and the landing gear straps put in, you will need to bend and tweak the landing gear some so the wheels both end up where they belong. This is pretty much a permanent fix.
     Type at you later,
     Dan McEntee
 

I suspect that steel or stainless thin-wall tubing will be almost as bad as brass -- doubling the thickness of the tubing multiplies its resistance to bending out by a factor of 8 if I'm getting my math right -- 4 if not.  I'm not sure if I've tried the double-wall brass tubing thing, but I've drilled out a 1/4" bolt with an 1/8" hole (on a lathe), and that works dandy.

I've got a couple of planes where I bent the gear to go all the way through the fuselage, and just put slots in the plywood fuse doublers so the wires laid up tight against one another -- it works like a charm, no need to bush the hole.  Mostly because of that same factor-of-8 increase in strength just from the dimensions of the thing.