Lancer's Landing gear, any better ideas?

[goose]

I am in the process of building the Lancer, and I am just to the step of attaching the landing gear. I must say that it is simple, and it looks like it will rip the bulkhead out of the plane on landing. Is there a better way to attach the gear, or are the kit plans OK for this one? I have plenty of spring steel wire so I can bend my own, but I was just looking for ideas that have worked in the past.

Thanks y'all

Mike

[Grabber]

I to have a Lancer waiting in the wings to be built , and like you thought that the pins for axles looked rather flimsy. My thoughts were just as yours to simply extend the wire to serve as axles. Many folks say that thread wraps add a lot of strength to such assemblies but I have not yet tried this technique, so can,t witness to the idea. Thread wrapped around the area where the pins are in the balsa would probably weigh the same as just extending the wire do not know for sure. I have also heard that if low weight and long flights are your primary goal it would be best to leave the landing gear off. Guillows however does state that the model will balance if built to the exact plan with no additional weight added to model. So that does tempt one to build to plan. I do not know what I will do. Please let us know what you do and how it works out. I will probably build with the wire extended to act as axles. But could build with pins and if problems come up could repair and wrap with thread. hummm! just don't know what to do do!

Grabber

[Wildpig]

The pins are too flimsy. I bent my landing gear so that it was one piece from one wheel, up the gear leg, across the fuselage, back down the other gear leg and then out to the wheel.

Yeh, yeh, I know it adds weight. But, I wanted functional gear for R.O.G.

[goose]

Did you just use tha balsa in the kit and run the wire over it? How did it attach to the Fuselage?

[Wildpig]

I used the balsa in the kit, ran the wire on the inside of the balsa gear legs. Made an extra former and sandwiched the wire between the two formers.

[zoltron55]

if you are building it for rubber power,leave it off. I did that on my Lancer & Javelin. Both land fine in grass. If you are using elec. or glow power thin plywood &wire will work

[ADW 123]

I second the motion... just skip the landing gear... it flies much better without it and you can skip out on lots of weight and trouble

[goose]

I thought I would update you on the build. As I previously said, I was at the stage to atatch the landing gear, and that step needed to be completed before the tissue covering of the model. So after reading the replies, I started to cover the tail and wings, to give me more time to research what I want to do with the landing gear situation.

Lancer1.jpg

I am going with the kit colors since I like the red and yellow, and not the booring white and gray that is in the kit.

After doing some research I have decided to make removeable gear for this plane. The first step was to add a place to mount the gear, which I have done by adding two aluminum tubes across the fuselage at about the points where the gearshould attach. These will allow me to bend some wire landing gear and attach then with a rubber band for display, and remove them for flight. I haven't figured out how I will bend the gear just yet, but at least I can start the covering of the fuselage now, and figure out the gear later.

Lancer2.jpg

The aluminum tubes are in slots in the fuselage so that they don't extend beyond the base of the model, and are re-inforced with thread on the adjacent bulkheads, probably overkill for display, but it added much less weight than the kit landing gear plan.

More to come when I figure out how I want to bend the gear.

Mike

[goose]

Made some legs for the lancer. I can't claim origonality for this since I copied it from a plan that I saw while I was looking for ideas. Basically each side has it's own gear, and the rubber band holds it on the plane. The wire is bent to shape, wrapped with fine copper wire, and soldered, I suppose thread and glue would also work.

lancer_legs1.jpg

Bent soldered wires.

lancer_legs3.jpg

Installed on the Lancer. This will give me the option of flying with or without the landing gear.

Still have more work to do on the Lancer before it can fly. Today is a snowstorm, so I will be able to get a little more work done.

Mike

[Grabber]

goose,

That is a good idea! Thanks for posting the solution you have decided to use. I'm sure you could tell from my original post I was undcided.I made the landing gear removable on my Mustang and really like it for flying. I think it really makes the landings in grass a lot better with less damage. I have a Cessna 180 and did not make the landing gear removable and after the first test flight gear was damaged and required repair ( hit fence with gear,bummer). Finally made gear with no balsa ( since it broke off and poked holes in fuse covering) and instead of tubes like you built iI used piece of music wire placed in drilled holes in lower longeron just in front of the back cabin fuse bulkhead, then added soft wire from landing gear wire ( that had broke away from fuse mounting and was angled backwards) to added music wire in lower longeron, just wrapped soft wire around gear and wire in fuse . Now when there is a hard landing the soft wire gives aborbing the force of the impact and the only thing needed is to straighten soft wire to repair gear. The tubes are a great idea and will be used on next non WW1 plane.

Grabber

[goose]

Thanks for all of the nice comments.

I have completed the "easy" part of building a plane, now on to the tough part of getting it to fly.

Javelin2.jpg

Here is a closeup of the landing gear mount. It seems to stay on pretty well so far.

Javelin3.jpg

I also had a little difficulty with the instructions for mounting the wing. You can see by my earlier pictures that I added a couple dowels in the cabin area for the rubber bands to loop over so that I didn't have to wrap them around the whole plane (whose idea was that?) But I noticed that in the instructions, stick #14 on that step does not have a length on the plans, and it is also shown being placed in an area that you can't see in the diagram. I used 14 to cross the back of the two runners on the top of the plane that the wind rides on as a stop. I noticed that since the wing comes to a point there, it tended to rock, so I sanded that point flat. Then I noticed that there was nothing keeping the wing from moving side to side, so I added a couple of rails under the wing to hold it in place. So if the rubber bands are to allow the wing to be removed for easier transport, then it still works, however if it was to allow the wing to come off during a crash, I didn't help that situation Here is a poor picture of the wing attachment.

Javelin1.jpg

Since spring is upon us I should be able to get outside and try it out. I am hoping that it will fly better than my 900 series Mustang.
I did put on a Peck Prop, and made a place for my winder to hook onto, so that will make part of the flying easier. I still need to add the motor peg and make up a motor for this plane. What is a good motor for this plane?

Thanks
Mike

[davidchoate]

my tissue is gray and white. i am not going to paint to save weight. i got 1/8" aluminum dowels to use aslso.