lear31A

My Feedback: (123)

A friend just finished building it, ARF with $500 worth of robart gear/wheels/retracting tailwheel, waited for 6 months for the Revolution 50 with custom muffler. Completely awesome building job and finishing. Anyway, the first flight went great, all trimmed out, came in for landing with half flaps, nice and slow. The wheels touched and bounced back up slightly and on the second bouce the left main gear came all the way through the top of the wing. This landing was not that bad, in fact, it was a normal landing with a slight bounce. Has anyone else had /seen this on the ARF? It broke at all glue joints around the gear mount.

gary9648

My Feedback: (1)

Iv'e seen six of these fly, and I have one of my own and have many flights on it. It like any other plane if you land to hard something is going to give. You may have received a defective wing, but can't tell because I did not see the wing in question. Were the gear damaged? I always coat the entire retract area with epoxy before flying. Does your friend have much experience with this type of aircraft? What was the flying surface like. Very ruff grass fields can play havoc on retracts.
Gary

flyinrain

My Feedback: (25)

I'm putting one together now. I've talk to several people who have had this problem. Before putting in my gear I went throught the whole area looking for problems and found several. I saw the main wood that the landing gear screws into not properly glued to the rest of the airplane. I also added some strength to the area knowing this to be an issue. I also think the springs on the robart gear to be too stiff to help absorb some of the forces.

SpitfireMKI

My Feedback: (2)

We have a chap at our field that has pounded his TF Arf (Fixed gear though) and has not broke anything. You would have to see some of this to believe it, my planes would never survive !

You must remember when you post a message like this that one man's little bounce is another's slam dunk.

As far as landings, I try to avoid three point landings with my warbirds, I feel they land better on the mains. Smaller 60 size planes are different here, this can be their kiss of death on grass.

Most real warbirds land this way and you will avoid bounces like this. I'm not talking blazing in, just the power stays on 1/8 throttle or so, you allow the flaps to kill the airspeed and set down lightly on the mains then kill the power to idle. But then every plane and landing situation can be different............

The best thing to do is to investigate the area and try to determine the chain of events. I'll bet you just got a flawed wing.

S1

lear31A

My Feedback: (123)

He and myself are very experienced with warbirds and such. Our club has a new 400' by 30' blacktop runway. We all have less than desirable landings on occasion, this was just not that bad at all. I have it on video. I do think the retracts are a little tight, however, they were not damaged.

Kirk RC

My Feedback: (4)

Lear,
Not at all uncommon with TF kits, including the ARF. A few years ago RCM even did a feature on how to beef up the retract area with minimal wt. Go through the threads here at RCU and you will see that your not alone. Landing a high wingloading is much different than most of the planes people fly everday and the margin for error is less, all that said I dont question for a minute that a good landing can break the gear mounts/ribs on TF warbirds I have seen it happen to a few very good warbird pilots. Good news is that its an easy fix that often looks worse then it is. Good luck

lear31A

My Feedback: (123)

Thanks, I will do a search

TLH101

My Feedback: (90)

I have bent my struts twice on hard (heavy crosswind with side loads once, and a "forgot to flair" once) landings on my TF ARF P-51, without damaging the mounts.

flyinrain

My Feedback: (25)

If someone finds that please post it here

prop wash

Lear,I agree with all the above.I have the TFGS P51 and I had to epoxy the bed logs for the retracts because they were not glued properly.I hope Top Flight has corrected this problem,it's a great plane.I love to fly her.Tom

mulligan

I searched, too, and couldn't find it. I will check my joints now, though, thanks to this thread. It does seem that most of the plane is put together with wood glue, not epoxy or CA [X(]

RWHorton

I have a the 63!QUOT! TF P-47 and built it according to the plans, this has been almost 10 years now. During my first flying season the gear came out twice on a soft landing.[:'(] I got real tired real quick and striped the sheeting off and fixed the problem. No more structural failure

I finish the 190d-9 last spring and right from the outset I re engineered the landing gear mounting. No problem with the 190d-9, in fact it took a really hard landing in about 30 mph crosswind and although I had to send the gear in to be repaired the plane is fine.

One thing to keep in mind is the landing forces these plane will see. It not just up and down but side to side and back and fourth. Some of theses loads can be double or triple, maybe more. I am building the TF GS P-47 now and this plane will weight around 30 lbs fully loaded, so the gear will and wing structure will need to be able to withstand landing loads of up to 100lbs, just in case I don't grease it in.

scalebirdman

My Feedback: (6)

It's an ARF It's rumored that some of them are actually assembled with glue!