I'm pretty much done with the Byron F15C gear installation now. That was a months-long journey. Thanks to Zach Geragi for the excellent CNC machining of my Solidworks design. We have collaborated on a number of projects, including Bob Moore's giant Cessna Citation landing gear, and the Minnesota Giant B1 Lancer model. That last one is huge, it has an 18ft wingspan. We also developed a retrofit servo-operated nose gear steering kit that replaces the troublesome hydraulic steering in the Fly Eagle Jet and Skymaster F16's.
Now, I'm working on some custom fuel tanks. It's a challenge to take advantage of the irregular shaped voids close to the jet's CG in a gas tank design. I designed the tanks, and 3D printed them to make sure they fit. You can see them in the pictures. I actually managed to fill up the wing fillet cavities with "tank". Now that the tanks have been fine tuned a couple times, I'm experimenting with making one-time molds off the 3D printer. The tanks are mirror image models of each other. The first design was great, but the first installed tank blocked the second tank from fitting in, so that was the first big design change. That change made the volume too small, so I had to expand the tanks in other areas. Then the retracted mains interfered, so on to the third iteration, which worked. Now I'm printing the first of the mold pieces. The printed mold are one-time use, and I can break them apart to remove the tank pieces.
