I have a Sig LT 40 that I have begun flying with my instructor. The plane flys great but the problem I am having is the nose gear keeps bending on landing and landings have not been rough. Could anyone recommend a good after market nose gear that will hold up better. Your input would be greatly appriecated.

There are a number of good aftermarket nose gears out there, but may I add as an instructor I have seen most beginers go from bending nose gears to never touching them again as they gain competency in landings. If you do it right, the nose gear will not touch down until well after the mains have taken the impact of the landing. Remember that with a tail dragger there is no nose gear and try to land that way - tail lower than the nose. You may indeed want to go to tougher nose gears on that plane, but the factury unit is adequate if you change your landings a bit. Try it, it can't hurt, and may save some expense as you will soon outgrow the trainer phase.

quint

I think this would be about right for you... I've used the 400 size twice and it's great stuff.

[link=http://www2.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin/wti0001p?&I=LXH126&P=ML]Fults 400 series[/link]

I agree with nbcguy. Fults is a great stuff!!! Indeed, if you want to go to the extreme you can get robarts, but then your nose gear will cost almost as much as the plane.

I heard that if you take the nose gear and put it in a oven at a certain temp, it will harden the metal, it wont bend for a while. I always converted my plane to a tail dragger, on a LT-40, just use a free wheeling tail wheel, not hocked up to steering, a guy at our field did that, works great.

I just ordered a Fults for my Uncle's Aircore 40 trainer. We keep bending the nose gear and I gaurentee I'm not landing it hard.

Quint, thank you for the advise I really appreciate it. But LOL my instructor in the one making the landings at this point in my instruction!!! Thanks again!!!

Get the fults and forget about it. The gear you get with some trainers is pure junk. As for landing...try to set the plane down so that the main gear touches down just an instant before the nose gear does. A slight nose up attitude as you flair should have you touching down like a feather.

Silly question, but you don't have it installed backwards do you? If you install the nose strut backwards it will bend a lot easier than if you install it correctly. The force of landing should COIL the spring, not uncoil it.

A lot of guys never do learn to really land slowly, even some instructors. Not saying that's the case here, but I've seen it.

It also depends a lot on your field. If you have a lot of tall grass and grass clumps or a bumy field, you'll bend up the gear a lot faster than you might on a well cut and rolled grass field or on pavement. Tall grass is espeically sneaky that way, you don't think much about it, but it DOES increase the forces on your landing gear quite a bit, on BOTH landing and take off.