"What happen to your retract system?" Well, I'm so glad you ask. As you noticed in some of the pictures, I basically removed the retract system and made a fixed gear system (sorry about the crappy pics). I filled in the retract unit wells with hardwood and drilled it out to accept the landing gear wires, and filled in the wheel wells with balsa using thin CA and epoxy. My reason:
The retract units will be subject to failure and breakage because of being weak in design...I can't fix that. I've done a lot of scalers including a 222 with a really trashy retract system that broke on landing and cause total destruction of the fuselage...been there, done that. I've done a Bell Ranger, that is an excellent scaler to build and flys well. I like the A-109, I wanted wheels instead of skids, and this model looks great. Going to a fixed gear system eliminates impending problems and possible damage due to failure....just my logic. The second time I hovered this 109 with retracts, the right gear broke causing a tipover, lucky for me, no damage other than the retract. So here's some pics of it as a fixed gear and a note about the supplied wheels. The supplied wheels are LOW BOUNCE plastic hub which translates to shock directly to the heli. I replaced the stock wheels with Dubro rubber with aluminum hubs. Yeah...it can be a little bouncy, but damage will be a LOT less to the fuselage.