z06kal

Moving along. These retracts sure do take long to set up! I must be into the retracts a good 10 hours. Unfortunately I had to cut a slot in the nose wheel well in order to extend the nose strut. I heard many reports that this airplane will not rotate correctly if the gear does not have the plane positioned with a nose up rake. Anyway rather than redo the main gear all over I took the easy way out and simply extended the nose gear. I have plenty of clearance now in the tail to swing any prop I want without worry.

Anyway. I quickly fabbed up a box using scrap ply to encapsulate the air tank. I then carefully measured and cut out my own retract/servo tray out of 1/4" ply to install my retract valve, servo, fill valve, and pressure gauge. I included pictures of the progress and finally the finished retract setup. All thats left is to hook the main gear up. I temp hooked up just the nose gear to pressure test and cycle the system. What a pleasure see it finally work after all those hours. Anyway here are the rest of the retract pics.

I quickly threw all the parts on my scale for a rough AUW estimate. The airplane is coming in lighter than I expected. AUW is looking like somewhere around 9-9.5 pounds. I'm hoping I won't have to add any lead to the tail to get correct CG. Gonna have to move the 12S lipos FAR back (all the way back as far as they will go in the fuse).