luckly our field is paved.

A little story about pants though. I purchaced the colection of a local guy who was retiring from the hobby. Included was a Quicke 500, one of the orginal ones. The wire landing gear had cables and other add ons to try and stiffen it up. I found an aluminum gear of the right size and it had wheels and pants already installed. Dressed the little guy right up. I flew the plane a couple times on the buddy box, WOW what a ride, then put it away. I pulled it out again after I had a bunch of solo hours. Three or four good flights then it developed a really bad ground handeling habbit, sharp left turns. One of the guy who flew the quicke in compentition was "helping" me one day. It was behaving really bad that day. Taxi to the center line and as soon as you started throttle up, it would go into it sharp left turn, I'm not talking about a torque pull to the left, but cutting donuts the diameter of the wing span. He decided that I would hold the plane and he would come up to full throttle and then I would release it. A compentition start. Well when I released the plane, it lunged forward about 5 ft and then went into its donut trick. I though it was going to eat me before I could get out of it's way. As I'm carrying the plane back to the pits, I heard something rattling around. I shook the plane a few time and discovered it was comming from the left wheel pant. A small rock had found it way in and while it was free inside, it would lock the left wheel now and then. Off came teh wheel pants on that one. I now make sure that there is a lot of clearance around the wheel.

Don