RE: Scratch Building 1/4-Scale Pitts Model-12
The last picture offers a view of a concern that I've felt since the beginning of the design, that being the gear strut mounting. I might be (hope I am) wrong in my perspective that it is a good thing when gear stress cancels in a common mount and without a common mount there is no canceling so the supporting structure needs to be quite strong. I think the way the struts are mounted is fine but I'd like to have seen a box structure between the two with all thread screws traversing both mounts.
As is... gear stress might/will lever the mounts away from the former and failure with a difficult surgery to repair.
With the covering not yet on... not too late to think about that.
One plan might be to simply add two all thread rods (one up and one down) with both interior and exterior washers/nuts traversing between the two mounts and gear struts. Doing so, there would be no need to change any of the existing mounting screws and the result would offer stress canceling.
The reason for the interior washers/nuts is that the upper rod would see compression loads whereas the lower would experience extension loads.