Changing my Trike gear to taildragger......I know to reinforce the fuse welll where the new gear will bolt on.....but my question is this:

Shoule the landing gear AXLE be inline with the leading edge of the wing...... ?

or.....

should it be in front of the leading edge of the wing ....?????


Just where should it be prositioned in relationship to the wing...... ????


Thanks in advance for the help

On both of my taildraggers (an old telemaster and a super stick) the center line of the main gear wheels are just a BIT foreward of the LE of the wing. On both, I would say the BACK edge of the tires lines up with the LE of the wing.

HTH

Wheels be sure to really re enforece, I landed hard yesterday and it broke all the way thru the fuse, iam really ticked. When we got there and pick it up the nose was competley off.

Winghog......I'm glad you replied.....I know you have done this procedure before. I will reinforce well....but also concerned about
weight. I initially have cut 2 5/8" pieces to mount inside the fuse.....then drill up into them going thru the fusalage, instead of cutting
a hole in the fuse. I am also going to reinforce front to back of the new brace I am installing.

Also going to take out Dihedral......looks simple enough.....just bend the metal rod at the joining point.

Thanks

The inside ribs are at an angle i believe, so therefor it is not a simple metal bending...

Chad the wings will mount flat together, if he bends the rod correctly that will work just fine, I have done more than one of these, I did have to cut the center piece out so I could use the dowel and hole for the mounting of the wing, there are pics of all of this in Nexstar problems thread.
Wheels you never spell my name correctly I hope you don't fly upside down, just kidding. Weight isn't a problem either I used 2 pieces of 1/4 ply for the landing gear.
What I don't get is why I wasn't going fast and wasn't high I had so much damage to the nose, I screwed up somewhere, as you can see in the pic above the nose is off and the engine is laying back under the wings. The balse is split under neath the fuse almost to the rear, discovered this after pulling off the covering. Tower doesn't have any in stock either. The ole saito just quit on me, we were taking slow close pics of her I was returning to the runway for another shot when she sputtered and quit, I had to try a turn so the plane would'nt hit the fence, been there done that. Just can't believe it tore the whole darn nose off.
Wheeels be sure to test fit thw wings and rod, I had to rebend mine a couple of times before getting that right.

Hawg, sorryto hear of your troubles -- fortunately that's only a flesh wound.

I've done several of these conversions.

I mount the ply LG block in the belly on the forward side of the bulkhead that the wings butt against -- this location puts the LG just slightly ahead of the LE of the wings & gives me a solid location for the LG block. I always cut the belly open & glue the ply LG block to the bottom of the ply perimeter frame, with pine triangle stock fitted to the inner sides of the ply frame. The front of the LG block is fitted with a 1/4" balsa semi-lunar bulkhead that is glued to the belly skin & belly stringers. Not a single failure yet.

Note: I also bend the LG slightly to give a little bit of toe-in.

Britbat my hero, I basicly did the same except I used 2 plys 1/4 inch for the gear, you use the regular landing box I believe so you can use the stock gear, I am using the ultra stick gear cause it sits higher so I could run a bigger prop. I braced the heck out of it but something went wrong, I am considering I may have not mixed the epoxy correctly, don't know.

Winghawg,

Hey, nice to see another person close to home! I'm just down the I from you in Davis. I've got an LT40 that I converted to tailwheel. Dont know how the Nextstar fuse is designed, but on mine, I did away with the wire gear, and went with the Dubro nylon main gear. The LT40 fuse is flat on the bottom, and the Dubro gear is about an inch to an inch and a half wide at the attach point. I epoxied in a 3 x 3 square of 1/8" birch aircraft ply on the inside bottom of the fuse, right behind the bulkhead. My main wheels are just a little forward of the wing leading edge when the aircraft is sitting tail down. When it rotates up on the mains, they are right under the leading edge. I've had a few pretty hard landings and so far, no damage whatsoever. I think the gear being wider at the attach point distributes the force over a greater area than the wire gear would, in my opinion. Where do you fly there in P.V.?

WINGHAWG1... (you wouldn't believe I was the 6th grade Spelling Bee champ ...would ya ?) Sorry again for your loss....its frustrating
at times I am finding.

As for the wing.....I think I can bend the steel rod ok......but am going to keep the white wing joiner.....I think I figured out how to do this
by adding a strip of 3/32 along inside of the curve on the top edge of the joiner.....that way it should line up and fit flush. I may need to
drill a new hole through the back of the wing for the wing bolt , but that shouldn't be a problem.

I want to fly WARBIRDS very bad, but I am no-way qualified to do so yet...... SOOOOOOOO......I am transforming the Nexstar into....
"THE WAR DUCK". Its as close to a Warbird I can get right now with my skills......

Making it a taildragger....reworking the wing......covering it with olive drab monokote.... I am taking pics as I go......Gotta have some fun
along the way.

Here is how I did mine...

Here is the tail details...

Finished look. I had to move the battery & reciever far forward to rebalance the plane. So far it seems to be OK. I did come up short of the runway on the first landing and the plane hit the grass. One of the main gear halves was ripped off, but the nylon wing bolts did their job to sacrifice themselves to save the structure. All I had to do was replace two bolts, and place a new covering patch over that area. There was already a slot cut in the rear tail section where I bent the tail dragger steering arm to come out through that opening. I then soldered a threaded sleeve onto the steering arm, connected a horn onto it, and then linked it to the rudder control horn.