tenacious101010

My Feedback: (97)

I have a Seagull zero and find the ground handling the worst of any plane I have ever dealt with. It is squirrly to say the least. I have flown several taildraggers and understand how to control them (use of the elevator). All hardware is tight and moves as it should, the control rods are secure and show minimal flexing. I believe the excessivly wide stance of the mains is the cause of the weird handling, the plane has about a 56 inch wingspan, and the distance between the main wheels is 20 inches, very wide compared to all my other planes this size.
I realize the standard benefit of wide stance verses narrow stance, but the width seems to be too wide making the steering geometry. I read an article in Model airplane news about basic aircrasft design proportions, and it seems to confirm what I think is the problem. The article says the distance between the mains should be around 25 % of the wingspan. That means instead of 20 inch spacing, it should be around 14 inches.
Anyone have any thoughts on this? I have read posts on this plane and the bad ground handling has been mentioned by others also.

tenacious101010

My Feedback: (97)

I have been looking at this thing again and now think that there may be tow-out instead of toe-in causing my stability issues, I am gonna crank some toe-in and see how that works.
The way the wire legs mount to the wing, it induces a toe-out, looks like they may have to be bent before installation. I brought the main gear closer together, it is now 18 inches apart, it also looks a lot closer to scale spacing but I now have a feeling that toe-in is the real culprit.
I will update the results of the taxi tests in case this will help someone else.
Denny

tenacious101010

My Feedback: (97)

Looks like the toe in was the problem, did some high speed taxi tests today and it looks like I have solved the problem, I just turned the axles so the wheels point inward just a touch.
Denny