I appreciate the response Wayne.
I guess I should have told you the whole story.
The gear legs are all 4130 with very heavy bungee attach fittings. (if
they weren't, I would have done some business with you already!) I suspect
that the gear assembly is plenty strong in my case, I was more wondering
about the airframe. Specifically the wing attach and struts etc. as these
can take a pretty good pounding when you land hard. You pointed out the door
post rivets and that makes good sense, I will take a good look. I keep a
close eye on the entire tail assembly, as this also smacked the tail wheel
down good and hard. Given your ground loop comments, I realize that I am
probably over-reacting and maybe what I consider hard, isn't really hard at
all? With only 800 feet of runway with trees on each end, it is sometimes
hard to get the flare/airspeed just right, especially on a gusty day, so
some landings are a bit rougher than what I can do on a clear 2000 foot
strip. Have you ever seen or heard of wear or damage where the wing attach
fittings are concerned, due to hard landings or is this a pretty over
designed area?
I think I am a prime candidate for a more forgiving spring set-up like you
have, I may be in touch with you off-line to discuss if that is ok? If I
were operating on a longer strip, this would be a non-issue, but I am not!
Thanks for the input from you and everyone that responded.
Frank
-----Original Message-----
From:
mike.davis@dcsol.com [mailto:
mike.davis@dcsol.com]On Behalf Of
Wayne G. O'Shea
Sent: Thursday, June 24, 2004 10:18 PM
To:
rebel-builders@dcsol.com
Subject: Re: Smacking it on the runway!!
I've been sitting back on this one Frank..... as I don't like to over sell
here.... but the weakest link of the gear is that aluminum bungee strut.
Even MAM has it (the slider section) down now as a 200 hour "throw away" in
their Maintenance Manual.... so they started listening somewhere along the
line. The best "Band-Aid" you can use to hold the legs together is the 4130
struts and die springs like I build, or that you can fabricate yourself.
These overbuilt 4130 struts do wonders for keeping the gear intact even in a
ground loop. I've done one intentionally to avoid going through a fence (at
about 35 MPH) and have watched a "customer" do a couple at 45MPH++ without
damage to airframe. The only thing I have managed to bend on my airplane is
a main gear leg and I had to do a helicopter landing (at about 3 g's) onto
one ski edge, that sheared all my door post rivets out, broke my windshield
etc. The bent leg was very hard to detect even off the airplane. All I
noticed to prompt removing it was the tire/wheel seemed to sit a little
cocked compared to usual. Placing the gear leg on a flat surface and holding
at one end barely showed the warp, but pushing down at the other end had the
opposite end about an inch in the air thanks to the bend being only a few
inches out from the one end.
First check your bungee bolts. Did they get bent?? Then check the main gear
leg with a steel straight edge that matches the full length of the leg.
Cheers,
Wayne
----- Original Message -----
From: <
rebel@dcsol.com>
To: <
rebel-builders@dcsol.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2004 7:57 PM
Subject: Smacking it on the runway!!
Rebel 0145R here, EA81 Subaru and 0145R have provided me with some great
flying. I'm still very happy with my setup. However I do have a question
that
may be hard to get an answer for. Out of 140 landings so far, 138 have
been
really good, however today I smacked it down on both landings. My question
is,
how much can these planes take as far as landings go? Usually I don't feed
the
bunggies give at all but I did on these two landings. Does anyone know
where
the weak point would be just so I can check it out. I am probably over-
reacting, but I don't mind admitting a bad landing (or two!) if something
can
-----------------------------------------------------
List archives located at:
https://www.dcsol.com/default.htm
username "rebel" password "builder"
Subscription services located at:
https://www.dcsol.com/public/code/html-subscribe.htm
List administrator:
mike.davis@dcsol.com
-----------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
List archives located at:
https://mail.dcsol.com/login
username "rebel" password "builder"
Unsubscribe:
rebel-builders-unsubscribe@dcsol.com
List administrator:
mike.davis@dcsol.com
-----------------------------------------------------------------