SSE Landing gear

SSE Landing gear
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SSE Landing gear - 4/29/2008 2:17:23 AM

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Joined: 2/19/2007
From: River Falls, WI, USA
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I don't know if you guys remembered but about a month ago I said I was almost ready to maiden my Sig Somethin Extra... Well I did..and WOW did that thing fly nice. The .46FX was plenty of power on it, all until the engine quit on me. I had too much speed to land where I wanted to and when I landed, it went down in a freshly plowed field and ripped the landing gear right off

.. I repaired it and took it out again today, and the same thing happened, but I landed it on the grass but I had a lot of speed. The landing spot was fairly rough but I didn't think it would rip the landing gear off again. It wasn't the glue joints because it ripped a whole new chunk of wood out where it came out. Anyone else have problems with ripping their gear off their SSE? Any ideas on how to strengthen it?? Just put in some support wires or something? If you look at it, the design isn't really the strongest around there in my opinion.

RE: SSE Landing gear - 4/29/2008 2:43:22 AM

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From: Middleboro, MA, USA
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Check out what I did in my thread "yet another Sig Something Extra Build"

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The Wrights never crashed, they only had hard landings. I 've had some hard landings myself. AMA EAA AOPA revver #185

(in reply to Love2FlyMN)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 4/29/2008 6:09:59 PM

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Joined: 8/15/2005
From: Go Riders Go!!!!!!!, CANADA
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Love2fly, i did the very same thing this past weekend with my new SSE was well. I have done a little research on here and will be doing some major beefing up in that area for sure!!!

Geoff

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When life deals you a lemon do as i do and make a whisky sour!!!

(in reply to iron eagel)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 4/29/2008 8:01:03 PM

krossk

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Joined: 3/31/2004
From: Port Washington, WI, USA
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I reinforced the L/G plate in mine with tri-stock and still found that I had cracked the floor and fuse sides after about 6 flights.
I have since made some lite-ply doublers for the fuse and beefed up the whole gear mount.

(in reply to Flyboy76)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 5/1/2008 5:06:39 AM

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From: FPO AE, NY, USA
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Here's what I do on aircraft that will allow me to like the SE.. If it’s a
new build I replace the bottom fuse balsa sheeting with 1/8” lite ply
or 1/8”-3/16” basswood. On the SE, do not glue in the 1/4” ply landing
gear block. Cut a piece of the above wood to fit from the front firewall
to about 2”-3” just pass the rear edge of the ply landing gear block
location. Now glue the landing ply gear block inside the fuse to the ply
floor, fuse sides, and former. Glue in triangle stock all around the gear
block. You can also glue tri stock to the new ply bottom sheeting and
fuse sides

For a built aircraft, you can/should cut away the balsa sheeting to be flash
with the fuse side and the gear block. Cut and glue a piece of the above
wood to be about 4” ahead of the front edge and 2”-3” pass the rear edge
of the gear block. Glue in triangle stock. Cut two pieces of 1/8”-3/16”
balsa sheet to size and glue them to the front and gear of the of the ply/bass
sheeting. Sand and blend these with the original bottom sheeting and dress
up the ply.

You may need to modify/trim/cut this or that part to get everything to fit
as they are on the plans but it’s not a lot work if you have the tools. I
would use epoxy for all but the balsa sheet. If you can rip the gear out
using the above, you should be picking up a lot more pieces of your plane.

< Message edited by roncoleman -- 5/2/2008 3:11:41 PM >

(in reply to Love2FlyMN)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 5/1/2008 9:49:31 AM

Krener

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Joined: 11/5/2006
From: AS, AUSTRALIA
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Cant quite work out how you rip the gear block off an SSE??
Mine has had a little reinforcement with tri stock and 1/2" square block along the fuse sides and has shown no hint of giving.
I also ditched the factory landing gear and went with Dubro heavy duty glass landing gear-to date no probs.

How hard are you guys landing these things??

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I live in my own little world.................but it''s OK, they know me here.

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RE: SSE Landing gear - 5/1/2008 1:54:11 PM

krossk

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From: Port Washington, WI, USA
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Krener
How hard are you guys landing these things??

Not very - I reinforced mine with 3/8" balsa tri-stock and the point of failure for me was the balsa fuse sides above the tri-stock. But then I also fly off of a grass field too.

(in reply to Krener)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 5/1/2008 8:24:29 PM

flyX

Posts: 402
Joined: 7/24/2007
From: el centro, CA, USA
Status: online

I reinforced the sides with another lyer of ply.
Did it during the build so it was simple to get the parts flush

Bascailly did what kross did.
Epoxy the heck of out of it.
Ditch the stock landing gear and used a GP.40 extra gear to raise it..

I guess after a couple of rips. After you glue the pieces back.
You might consider using fiber glass on the inside for re inforcement.
Just give it a healhty coat of epoxy.

it's floater with the thick air foil

(in reply to krossk)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 5/1/2008 8:53:00 PM

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From: FPO AE, NY, USA
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Here’s a drawing of my earlier post. Maybe you can see/understand
a little better. The fuse sides are not inculded in the drawing.

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(in reply to Love2FlyMN)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 5/5/2008 5:53:16 PM

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From: Bruce, MS, USA
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If the stock gear is built correctly it should not rip out unless you don't know how to land. Any extra materrials or glue will add weight quick and the gear can still be ripped out with larger chuncks of the fuse coming with it. Those flexible type gear are much more forgiving and you could probally find some that will work. I have flown two the the sse and neither had gear problems.

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Buzz

(in reply to roncoleman)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 5/5/2008 11:01:10 PM

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Joined: 2/16/2008
From: kaneohe, HI, USA
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I have an early kit, I think 1999. I did notice that area to be a little under enginered. I solved the problem by wrapping one layer, 4inches wide of 5.7 oz. uni-directional carbon (glass will do fine, I just had the carbon on hand). I wrapped the layer around the outside of the fuse as high as the wing centerline on both sides.. one piece. I also use 4 nylon bolts as a weak link. I have never experienced any problems yet... but I fly off asphalt. I could see grass being a bit more troublesome. I hope you guys flying on the grass fields don't have the wheel pants on your planes. That could be the problem there as well.
Well, just my 2 cents of input.

DM

(in reply to buzzingb)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 5/6/2008 2:28:06 AM

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From: Middleboro, MA, USA
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The stock gear setup is not robust enough to stand up very well to less than perfect landings on grass. But there are many planes that have similar issues, the twist being one which springs to mind. Using wheel pants also add to the problem but, the main issue is you have a landing gear which are able to apply a lot of twisting force because of the thin mounting area. Some form of lightweight reinforcement of the area is really beneficial in the long run. Some guys have laser cut thin plywood to join the plywood mount to the F2 former on each side of the fuselage. Nothing against SIG’s design, even on the plans they have added the tri stock to beef up the mounting plate, due to the torque loads imposed on the fuselage sides. Keep in mind the only strength provide to the plywood plate is by a single layer of 3/16 balsa side with an additional 3/16”X1/2” fuselage doublers on which the plywood plate sits, and both of these are long grain with little or no vertical strength. I am currently building a bashed SE myself and have planed to use some carbon cloth along with veil for the fuselage finish. I would also mention I have gone to great lengths to minimize the weight of my build to maintain a finished dry weight of 4.5 Lbs and it is fully sheathed!
Bottom line here is: if you are careful you can add a bit of strength without an outrageous weight gain, so worst case you pop out some nylon bolts from those less than perfect landings, rather than rebuild the fuselage!

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< Message edited by iron eagel -- 5/6/2008 2:35:37 AM >

_____________________________

The Wrights never crashed, they only had hard landings. I 've had some hard landings myself. AMA EAA AOPA revver #185

(in reply to Aurora_60)

RE: SSE Landing gear - 5/11/2008 2:37:53 AM

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From: FPO AE, NY, USA
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Buzz Buddy,

Did you read and understand Love2flymn’s post? He asked “Any ideas on
how to strengthen it?”. What I gave him may be Old School technology
but it is something that he can work with. Most of the material was found
in my scrap/spare wood box. I’ve been using this method for 20 plus years
and I’ve never had a gear failure (rip out) because of it’s use. The only
time I’ve had the “gear ripped out with large chunks of the fuse” is when
I tried to land the plane in a negative 20 degrees (or more) angel of attack
at a high rate of speed.

So you say you never had your gear ripped out? Others have as you can
see from their input. They also think the gear design can be/is a weak
spot that can cause you to make unwanted repairs to your aircraft. All it
takes is to land a little hot the wrong way in the roughs at the edge of the
runway, land in a bean field, hit a mole hill, hit that clump of high grass
on the runway, or even dead stick into a freshly plowed field, there’s a
good chance you may rip the gear out of the fuse. As for the extra ounce
or so that’s added to the plane. My aircraft are usually within the middle
of the design weight, so the extra ounce or so should have little effect if
any on the performance of a plane that will be overpowered to start with.
For the peace of mind, I can live with the extra ounce or so.

As for the weight of the extra material (wood) that’s added to a SE, I
can’t tell you as I don’t have a gram scale. But if you went with the bare
minimum which is a 3”x5” piece of 1/8” lite-ply. It will be replacing 2”
of 1/8” balsa in front of the ply gear block and 1” of 1/8” balsa behind the
gear block. How much weight is that adding? The only extra wood you are
really adding, is a 2”x3” piece of lite-ply over the gear block and a 16”
piece of 1/4” or 1/2” piece of triangle stock plus the glue. If I wanted to
save weight I would go with Aurora 60’s New School technology but I
think I would still use a 4” piece of 1/8” lite-ply.

I’ve used metal bolts and nylon bolts but settled on the metal bolts. I don’t
think “I” would use nylon bolts on the SE because there’s a chance that
the gear could damage the wing when they break free. It may not ever
happen but Murphy always shows up at the wrong time.

That’s my dime,
I’m out.

< Message edited by roncoleman -- 5/11/2008 1:28:34 PM >

(in reply to buzzingb)

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