ORIGINAL: Gary Jefferson
ORIGINAL: Ali
Gary..
Can I be of any help at all? Shoot me your questions, maybe I can get a response for you? ?
Alex who built my F-86 did an awesome job. I can honestly say that from the day I collected it from him, everything has worked spot on without any issue. ( Rare for any large jet as complex as this)
He might be reading this and can help, or maybe if you have any specific questions on the 86 I could pass them onto him for you?
Regards Al
Jett. I dont think Morne was being too aggressive with his last post. The winking smiley would suggest not anyway.... and for Morne thats a big improvement
Ali, thank you for the offer and I do appreciate you trying to help. I have actually exchanged emails with Alex many times concerning the F-86, mostly discussing all of the things that need to be modified in order to make this plane function reliably. I can assure you that the reason your F-86 works well is because Alex took the time to make all of the changes that needed to be made in order for it to be reliable. Believe me when I say it did not come that way from the factory. I can give you a long list of items that did not fit and/or needed to be modified, and for what this kit costs it is not what I expected.
If I had not invested so much time and effort in the plane I would not keep it because I now know how long it will take to get parts when I need something. Our flying season is only about half of the year here and if it takes me two months to get parts I miss 1/3 of the flying season. I know parts can take this long because I have seen someone wait that long just to get a new plastic canopy. I can't imagine how long it will take if I need landing gear parts or something special.
Anyway, what I need currently is a new set of main retracts. They retract up just fine, however, when lowering the gear they stick and will not release until I push against the wheel to release them from binding (in the plane or out of the plane). The geometry of the machining of the slots in the side plates is not correct on the mains and the more pressure that is applied to retract the gear the harder it is to get them to release when lowered.
I have loosened the two screws that hold the trunion in the side plates and managed to get them to release at about 80 psi but then I have a lot of play in the gear, which is unacceptable for ground handling. The pin that slides in the side plates basically locks itself into the positive locked position, when fully retracted, and then binds. It takes a lot of pressure to overcome the binding and when it does the gear slams open. Imagine just holding your gear in the retracted position by hand, pumping your gear up to 80-100 psi and then releasing the gear. It sounds like the gear is going to rip out of the wing when they come down and lock. This is very large and very heavy gear.
I have two components in place to allow for very slow and smooth retract operation; one is an extra large air tank that holds a large volume of air and allows me to use 60-80 psi for operation of landing gear (lower pressure is always better); I have been doing this for years. Secondly, there is a Jetcat retract valve set on a 3 second pulse to give soft operation of the gear. The system works great when retracting the gear but is not helping at all when lowering the gear. BTW, the function of the nose gear is flawless, with very slow and scale operation.
If you can get Anton or somebody to send me a new set I will return these. Hopefully they can test the new set before shipping them, unlike the replacement cylinders for the speed brakes they sent that still didn't work on the second attempt and ended up costing me another $60.00 out of my own pocket to buy Robart cylinders.
Gary