dirtydingus,

That is a great solution! I contemplated doing the same thing to my Hangar9 Corsair when I was having nose-over problems with it. It is a bit easier to land than the GB, so I figured out how to land it softly before actually doing the mod. When you become very proficient at landing your GB you can always switch back to a taildragger configuration. What sort of mods did you have to make to mount the landing gear like that? Do you have any close up pictures of the bottom or your GB?

Craig,

The mains are stock, just re-bent so that the center of the wheel is 2" aft of the cg. The nose gear is bolted to two hardwood blocks fastened to the firewall via machine screws and blind nuts. Landing the Gee Bee in the standard tail dragger configuration is not that difficult in normal wind conditions. Its those cross-winds that can bite you. The tri-gear allows me to enjoy the Gee Bee without the worries of the infamous Gee Bee flip. [:@]

I need some advice. After destroying the wing on my first landing attempt with the stock gear, I have received a second arf and am in the process of getting the second wing ready. My question: Those of you who invested the $120 for the Robart gear, is it worth it? I am mainly concerned because Robart claims that the gear add 9 ozs of weight, and mine is already a little bit nose heavy since I have an OS 160 on mine. With the battery as far back as I could get it, I still needed about 1 1/2 ozs of lead in the tail. I see that some of the gear as well as the wheels are in front of the cg. How much extra nose weight did they add? I know the 160 has more than enough power, but I want to keep wing loading within reason. I was also thinking of keeping the stock gear, but leaving the wheel pants off to learn how to land it. On my first landing, which was good but a little hot, the wheel pants must have caught something or the gear flexed/twisted and the wheel pants went through the wing. I am fixated on the plane since it looks so nice and flies so well, but paying $220 every flight is a but much. Any advice would be great. Thanks! -Chris.

Chris,

Good to see you getting back into the air with your Gee Bee. I had to add 1oz of lead to the tail after I installed the Robart gear. This puts the weight of my GB at about 12.25 lbs dry. I can't say that I noticed the extra weight. The pants should be modified to telescope with the struts if you install them because they will contact the ground on a hard landing if you don't. http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_5615263/tm.htm

The stock gear without the pants should be reliable on hard landing. If you install the pants over the stock gear you should devise a way to keep the wheels from contacting the pants. Maybe a solution for the stock gear/pants problem would be a similar setup to my telescoping pants. But instead of covering the 1" gap with a solid material, use something flexible like white monokote.

I like my struts with telescoping pants. I've given them the acid test and they've held up well. It might be possible to develop an equally robust setup with the wire gear with flexible pants. I bought my struts thinking that they would be a "drop in fix" for hard landing but noticed that the pants would contact the ground in that event anyway after having installed them. I guess I would have tried flexible pants with the stock gear first If I had realised the "bottoming out problem" with the Robart gear before I bought them. I hope some of that helps.

Well I went and ordered the Robarts and got them today. They are installed in my new wing, and all I need to do is glue the old belly pan (the one that took hours of sanding to fit right). Craig: I like your telescoping pant idea. I see you used the stock wheels with the struts. How did you get them to fit? I put the stock wheels up to the struts and it looks like they will contact the fork when installed. If not, it is very, very close. I tried to drill out one of the brass collars in the wheel and almost got through it before it decided to start spinning. Advice? Don't feel like spending 17 bucks on Robart wheels at the moment. I will leave the pants off for now.

Chris,
Thanks, I am very happy with the reliability of the telescoping pants setup. Fairly quick to do too. Most of the time that I spent on them was in the planning. If I were to do it again, I would make the sheathing out of fiberglass instead of aluminum because the aluminum rubs against the fiberglass lower pant and leaves a dark residue. The residue wipes off easily enough with Windex though. I think fiberglass would have been easier to do also since I could have just waxed the pant in the area that I covered with aluminum, applied fiberglass and epoxy, wrapped it all tightly with wax paper or plastic wrap for a smooth finish, remove the cured fiberglass sheath and then cut out the 1" wide section from the pant. It would have made a perfectly fitted sheath for the pant that doesn't leave a dark residue. Oh well, something to remember for future projects.

I got the stock wheels to fit in the Robart fork by taking a disk sander on my electric drill to them. I used 80 or 100 grit I think. I'm having a hard time remembering how I got the axles to fit. Could you post some closeup pictures of the problem you're having. I'm having vague memories of just replacing the brass inserts with larger brass tubing that fit over the Robart axles. If I remember correctly, this required drilling out the plastic hubs of the wheels to get the larger tubing to fit.

Hey guys I am looking at the Great Planes Gee Bee,, I have a YS 110z laying around, don't you guys think this thing would be a perfect engine for it, it has the power of a 150 saito almost, , and is alot lighter, ,, and I am going to try and use the stock landing gear, I am not going to spend the extra money for the robarts, this is just a challenge to me,, I try and stick with 35%er and larger gassers but I figured this would be a good challenge, and from what I am hearing it will be,,hahaahahahha but let me know what you guys think about the engine,

Hi jongurley,
Your YS 110 should have plenty of power. You may need to add some nose-weight though since it is a light engine. For reference, my Saito 180 weighs around 35oz with the muffler and it balanced my Gee Bee with the stock wire gear and the 600 mah receiver battery mounted about even with the wing bolts near the back of the wing. No lead was needed until I added the Robart gear. If you mount the battery as far forward as possible you might be able to get it to balance on the recommended C.G. with a heavy prop hub. Looking forward to see your Gee Bee. They are real crowd pleasers

Yeh I am ready for the challenge,, hahahah we will see, my ARF should be in end of the week,

I have read all the post on the gee bee and I am having a lot of the same problems. My specific problem is the landing gear. The gee bee will not roll out straight when landing and also will do a nose over. No matter how soft I land, I have very little rudder control and the bee tips over. Has anyone come up with a solution for this problem short of buying the Robart custom gear for 125.00....SURE NEED SOME HELP

I read the post on installing the robart gear and making the wheel pants floating...great idea and seems like they work perfect. Anyone else have ideas and photos of the revamped gear.

You'll have to be a little more specific about the roll-out problem. Is it pulling left or right or just nosing over? One solution to nosing over might be to install a nose-gear like the pictures in post 302. It could still operate as a taildragger, but the nose gear would just prevent over-rotating onto its nose. Remove the nose-gear once you get proficient. Think of it as a "training wheel." Touching down with the stock wire gear and the pants installed at too fast a speed has caused nose-overs for me. Three-pointing is the best way to avoid that. The aircraft must fly slowly to be at the increased angle of attack required for the tail wheel and the mains to touch down at the same time. This means that the gear are rotated further out in front of the C.G. for any given descent angle and the lower speed puts less bending forces on the wire gear that might cause the wheel to contact the inside of the pants. Just flying without the pants installed until you can three-point your landings consistently might do the trick also.

Rudder control hasn't been a problem for me. In fact I find the rudder control very good on my G.B. I have my push-rod connected to the innermost hole on the rudder control horn and the outermost hole on a four holed servo arm. I may also have mixed in more than 100% throw for the rudder servo to allow the rudder to move to its fullest deflection possible. Did you use the shrink tubing on the rudder and elevator push-rod? I didn't think that would be sturdy enough, so I used carbon fiber tow instead.

Thanks for the comments. My primary problem is with nose overs....I really think with the stock landing gear, the flex is causing the wheel to contact the pants. Therefore, locking the wheel. Doesn't really matter what speed I land whether its a two or three point landing. Still nose over. I want to purchase the Robart struts made for the Gee Bee but wanted to make sure they work before spending the money. I have looked at your post and think the fix you made would work for me. On the roll out when it doesn't tip over, the wheels are wobbling side to side which prevents rudder control....It kinda goes where it wants to go.

Yeah,
The YS 110 should be perfect for this plane...
I was thinking the same route...
I love the look of this plane. I am also worried that if I wait too long,
GP my discontinue this plane!!!
I wish they woul notify us of cancellations in advance!!

Justin

Well guys i took my GeeBee out for its first flight today. Mine has a saito 150 in it. I did not weigh it but it flys lighter than it is. Mine had no tendencies to stall what so ever. My only complaint is the gear and the strength of the wing. I had a nose over because the left landing gear pushed right through the wing. Everything can be repaired. But on the brighter side the plane flys wonderful. I was amazed at how much authority the rudder had.



Rick

DANG!
ANy Video??

unfortunatly not of the landing mishap. I have a few minutes of some flying. It was getting dark and the auto focus on the camera was going nutts. I have a good friend that is going to help go through the wing and we may rebuild it, and hopefully make it better than it was. I would recomend to anyone getting this plane to peel the covering and strengthen the wing.

Rick,

The same problem happened to me...I made a very good landing and the gear flexed and caused the gear to push thru the left wing. Easy fix and now not a problem. I think the best solution is to buy the Robart gear and forget about the poor quality GP gear.

Guys, you must check out Henry Haffke's setup. Where the front and rear wire comes together to form a triangle is where you want to add reinforcement. Simply form a 3/8 of 1/2 inch balsa filler for this area and the gear will cease to flex on landings. The wire alone is not strong enough at touch down to prevent the gear from flexing into your wheel pant.

RevGQ i did the mod as you described. Yes it does stop front to back movement but when flying off of grass like i do there is a substantial amount of side to side flex from the gear because of the weight of this plane. I am think of using expanding foam to help stop this after i repair the wing. If you peel the covering off of the wing where the gear mounts you will notice it is not strong enough to support the weight that it needs to. As for the robart gear I thought someone in this thread said they make things worse if you fly off of grass. Does anyone have any more insight on this?

I didn't say exactly that, but what I said might be interpreted as that. I found the lateral strength of the robart gear to be very good and didn't think that there was much of a chance for them to bend side to side or twist and let the wheels contact the pants, but I did find the spring force of the struts weak enough that I suspected they would bottom out on a hard landing. By the sound of it, I think that the video posted in my telescoping pants thread shows an actual bottoming out of the struts on the hardest touch and go so as to prove my suspicions.

With Robart struts installed, I measure a distance of 1, 7/16" from the bottom of the pants to the bottom of the stock foam wheel (this is a "stock" measurement since I didn't change this distance when I modified the pants to telescope with the struts). With my telescoping pants, this distance decreases to 1" under the force needed to bottom out the springs in the strut. This means that the foam wheels compress about 1/2" under this force. The struts themselves compress about 15/16". 1/2" + 15/16"= 1,7/16". So, if the pants do not telescope with the struts, they will contact Terra firma when the struts bottom out. These measurements were taken by pressing a pine 2x4 against the wheel of my GB. If the landing surface is more compressible than the weakest link in this test (the spring force of the struts--based on the largest compression distance under equal force), you can expect less clearance under equal force. Thus you might interpret my statements as saying "they (Robart struts) make things worse if you fly off of grass."

What happened to tom crump and his zenozh engine?
I am vary curious as to what happened with the flight performance!!

ANyone seen one with gas?

Well guys I have my wing totally finished for the GEEBEE,, I went with the stock year,, it seems fine, and my club www.wayneaero.com has the smoothest runway in North Carolina,(really),,, I think it will be alright,,, tonight I will mount the YS110 and the throttle servo and the tank,, and I have to decide on what prop I need, I want this thing to be as fast as it can with the YS 110,,

Here are some pics of my Gee bee, all I have to do is mount the YS 110 and put receiver in ,,

Looks great..
Thanks for the picts...

Also, I got a message from a prevy owner of this aircraft.
Basically, any gas engine is just way to heavy for this plane....
Stick to NItro with this one!

jongurley,,,,,

the original gear will not work. It is too weak to hold the plane, and the side to side movement will cause contact with the wheel pants. Also, even with the smoothest of smooth landing the Gee Bee will have a tendence to nose over. Why,,,,the gear moves back when they contact the runway and lock on the pants. And, if you get a good landing and the Bee doesn't tip over, it is really hard to control the roll out because the gear starts moving from side to side....So,,,good luck with the stock gear...

I finally gave up on mine and I fly off a very smooth runway and bought the Robart gear which solved all the problems.