mgnostic

One thing that is proving to be a bit of a challenge is designing a set of landing gear struts. The biggest difficulty is that I haven't found a source that specifies actual strut lengths. Even the Wylam drawings with all of their inaccuracies only point out the relative locations of the wheels and the axel and some of his landmarks seem kind of arbitrary. I suppose if I had the skillset I could 3-D model the plane and dimension the gear from there. As it is I am physically 3-D modeling with a jig. I located the front and rear landing gear mounting points relative to each other and then suspended the axel where it ought to be. One error that I made is that the landing gear mounts are about 3/4ths of an inch too far forward. I should have been building in the mounts when I was planking the fuselage but I missed it. I didn't spot the problem until I started to design the landing gear. This by the way illustrates Landing Gear Mark II. The first version didn't even get far enough to take photos. There will probably be a Mark III. Mark II will serve for getting the airplane on its wheels and checking angles and dimensions. Once I get the dimensions and angles where they need to be I should be able to make each side from a single piece of wire with the mounts for the spreader bar soldered in place. I am also going to need to get a better wire bender as the bends have a bit too much radius especially where they enter the fuselage.



This last photo illustrates the mounting plates. The plates are 1/4 inch ply with an additional 1/4 inch under the actual mounting plate. The plate is also anchored with additional triangle stock to tie it to the central box in the fuselage and to the rear lower wing spar carry through. Had I thought farther ahead the strut mounting blocks would have been just aft of the fuselage former underneath the the lower wing fairing.