I don't think the hangup with our order was Daryl--I think Intairco was out of stock and had to build new struts to fill our order.

David

I am up to 21 flights on my MB339. One thing that I noticed about this jet and the same problem with the L-39 is that the use of flaps on landing causes this jet to have an ugly tip stall, unless you land just perfect then you get that bounce that all of us love. To solve this issue I decided to land without the flaps and believe it or not this plane lands pretty slow. I have the Jet Cat P-80 and my weight is 21 and 3/4 pounds. Since I stopped using flaps landings have improved 100 percent. I have the bend in the gear and the jet is low to the ground. But the hop skip and jump is no more, I can grease the landings and I fly at a short field. I hope this information helps because I was considering the new landing gear and struts but I can say today that the bounce and tip stall problem has been solved.

P. Richards aka S.W.A.T. TEAM

Hi. I have had a re- think on my 339 although I have not flown it much since last season. This was due to a re shaping of the wheel wells and lower wing surface in a firm landing. This resulted in a re build of the lower wing sections on both wings. I have 1/4" light ply strengthened the Spring air mountings and this is completely different to the orig, as there was nothing there to start with ! I used Intarco nose wheel struts ie the long versions and turned them down a touch in length. I used 2 1/2 " intarco wheels /brakes and copied the side cheeks in 2 mm mild steel plate. I put a set screw into the leg so as to adjust the wheel out tension and then rebuilt the wing around the new unit. The wings are 1/2 lb heavier each one so thats + 1 lb in all for a strong structure and an oleo wheel. Frankly it all sounds so easy after the event but I can tell you i spent many hours trying out different ideas and ended up here.

Does it work?
Don't know yet as I have not flown it since the mod. but it sits nicely on the spring oleos (springs from and old Robart leg proved the one even after buying a large box of selected springs ..well thats life ) and sinks progressively when you push it down, and the gear goes away, so I will let you know soon !!!
I enclose shot to help show what I did and hope this may help. If anyone requires further info or larger/better shots please contact me and I will help if possible. The shots on site are low res and my camera at present has a fault but more detail would be available soon if required.
No bounce is a good bounce !!

Back from my trip. Since I'm too tired & basicly lazy, I'll wait to switch out the engine and just fly the Macchi this weekend and get some more landings on the struts. Guess I'll have to agree with P. Richards that less flaps is somewhat better. I had a huge amount of flaps originally, but lately have been using only 3/4" TE down. Seems to make the flare less tricky, but the airplane will stall and drop quickly if too slow. I got the smack down landing that way. It's also harder to spot the landing on no wind days since the power is at idle so far out.

I know this is beating a dead horse but the struts are holding up despite my initial skepticism. 44 flights with just under 50 landings (of all sorts). The Macchi Bounce is basically gone. These struts have now lasted longer than the Eurokit struts and look just fine for the wear. I finally got to fly under calm conditions, and, in spite of what I said before, have gone back to full flaps for the no wind landings to get the touchdowns reliably in "the zone". Maybe now I can get this one put away and get back to the TopCat.

Turbulence/Flanker - you guys got your Macchi's going yet??

Mine s going, but I still have the wrie struts. I have not taken the knife to the struts in. I need to get another set of 400 Series Spring air for that.


Turbulence

Thud,

Nope. The wife gave me about two weeks off after graduation then hit me with 3 years worth of accumulated honeydoos.

No current ETA on the Macchi.

Flanker

Those paybacks are hell

I was tinkering last night on how to cut the Intarco struts when I realized the Spring air retracts would NOT work. The strut diameter appears to be a little bigger than half inch. Remembering what Thud said about losing the dampening feature, I butchered up one of my Top Cat struts from Top Gun and they Fit just about the same as the Intarco. With some more modifications you can get them to AMOST CENTER right in, but as they are right now, I would have to open up the wing just a little to get them in. I cut the top part of the Strut, then I also cut off about one thirs of the spring. They are strong as heck for this plane and I still have some dampening. Flew them today and still bounced a bit due to a Hot landing. Next time I will turn down the amount of Flaps used during landing or just not use them at all as I beleive this is what made me bounce today (the plane took off again after rolling for about two feet) then the famous bounce dance came out and did three touchdows. Next Up Fresno

BTW. I have not touched the Intairco struts, but have opened the package, if any of you need a Set email me and we'll work out a deal.

Turbulence
[email protected]

I only lost the oil damping on the Intairco struts, but basic spring damping was still there. Yeah the struts seemed a smidge over 1/2" but they fit the Robart 630's Ok. Maybe the Springair's are a closer tolerance.

There is a definite speed range where this airplane is happy on touchdown. After the last 50 landings on the Intairco struts, my conclusion is 1/2 flaps (1" TE down) for windy landings and full flaps (2" TE down) for no wind. I wouldn't go to no flaps, but hey, I think there's a lot of ground effect in play here and maybe no flaps will reduce it. Let me know if that experiment works!

My Cg is about 1/2" behind the hatch line. Tam flys father back but I think a forward Cg will help with the bounce issue. I sequenced all my fuel forward for landing.

Sorry I missed you guys at Prado today but I had family in. Come on up to Rabbit.

Thanks to Jim Brown (Canada), Gary Szetlak and I were able to land our P-80 powered MB-339's without bouncing at Heart of Ohio Jet rally last weekend. These MB-339's are using Spring Air retracts with wire struts. Previous attempts to land was followed by minor bouncing followed by MAJOR bouncing!

Jim's secret was to add a little "crow" to the ailerons in conjunction with flaps. His formula was ailerons up 3/8", flaps down 1 and 1/8". It worked for both of us!

Thanks

Yeah, maybe I'll rewire the ailerons next time I drag the airplane off the shelf. I don't have enough channels since I'd also like to have two flap channels. With the wire struts, some of my worst bounces were with the slowest landings. Even at that, the bouncing was only every 4th or 5th landing. Current strut set up gives minor "skips" every maybe 20 or so landings. Maybe you can report back after another 50 landings on how well the crow technique continues to work on this plane?