hogbilly

Anyone ever try moving the landing gear on a tail dragger astro hog forward?
If you could give any results or lack of would be great.
And any thoughts of why I should or shouldn't

carrellh

My brother bought an already built Astro Hog that had trike gear. He wanted tail dragger, so he routed out some of the balsa in front of the wing and epoxied in a 1/4" plywood plate. He used long bolts, with fender washers inside the plane, to attach an aluminum gear. A few people said he'd have bouncy landings but that has not been the case so far. He's very happy with it.

Jim Finn

My Feedback: (2)

I put these on an Astro Hog. No bounce landings!

hogbilly

Those shock absorbers are a great idea!!!
I just happen to have old R/C cars around that I hate.
what a better way to depose of them by making them usefull
but what I am really trying to find out is what happens when I move them forward?
I already have the hog built in a tail dragger. but having problems with nose over on landings [&o]

FHHuber

There is a tendancy for a poorly performed landing to bounce a LOT if the mains are too far forward on a taildragger. If you do a good 3-point landing every time... you will never see it. If you land fast and bounce... the wheels being forward will push the nose WAY up. Closer to the CG won't push the nose up as badly.

For taxi and take-off... if the wheels are too far forward for normal taildragger ops... but not essentially under the prop (like 1930's FF models..) any tendancy to ground loop gets amplified. There is a "sweet spot" range appx at a 15 to 20 deg angle forward of CG whent he airplane is level, where the plane will be nicely controllable, yet not have a bad tendancy to nse-over.

The 1930's FF models... the wheels were WAY forward for a very brief ROG run (the tail did not rise before the mains) and then the foward location of the mains acted to protect the propellor. (which you hand carved even for a gasoline engine... because the factory made props were $1 each... which would be kinda like paying $20 for a 10X6 now... The engine was about $6.)

hogbilly

believe it or not I was able to read the whole message.
and it made very good sense. I think I will just leave the gear where they are and learn to fly better. time to quit makeing excuses and blaming the plane
its a perfectly good flying plane and I really shouldn't change it. Thank you very much for your advice

huggins

I would leave them in the stock position. Mine does not have nose over tendency and it doesn't bounce on landing. I generally bring mine in with a click or two of throttle and land it on the mains rather than trying to 3-point it, though both methods seem to work great. Mine is the easiest landing plane in my fleet. One thing you might check is the angle of the gear. The main gear should be canted forward a bit relative to the "L" that goes into the gear block in the wing. If they were put on the wrong side, or it has bent, the wheels could be as much as 2" back from where they are supposed to be.

Mike

Joe Spitfire

My Feedback: (1)

I built my Hog as a tail-dragger over 12 years ago, and the only nose-over I had was trying to juice the throttle to get it out of a rut on the taxiway.

It's been a while, but I'm sure I did it according to the plans and specs....although, if you look at the pics, you'll notice that I DID modify the tail feathers more to my liking!

hogbilly

Since I posted this last, I regret to say that I lost that plane due to constrution error[:@]
I forgot the fill between the spars on the tail feathers I lost her on a nice big loop, the horizontal stab just decided togo a different direction than the plane. After the investigation I felt really silly. I might try to rebuild it this winter. Sadly this is the only pic I have

afra

hogbilly - sorry to hear about your Astro Hog going in. Hopefully you will get it in the air again.

Joe Spitfire - That is one sweet looking Astro Hog.

Here's a pic of mine. It is a great flying airplane.

Scott.