alextran

Has any one installed robarts 622-5s into Dave Plats 80" Mustang? If so woud you please tell me how? I am building one and need to know what to do for the landing gear. I ordered and recieved the 622-5s but I can see it will take some doing to make them work. They don't even come close. I can still send them back. What should I do?
This is my first attempt with retratcs and war birds so any help will be greatley appreciated.

Thanks:

Leo

pittsdriver

My Feedback: (7)

I have this kit also and was going to put the same gear in it myself. Not having installed retracts puts you at a disadvantage. Making up some ply mounting plates shouldn't be to hard, just make sure the geometry is right. I'm doing a Spitfire right now and won't get to the 51 for awile so I'm not a lot of help. I do think that that is a good gear for the airplane as the cantaliver strut lets you get it in the scale position. The retracts that have the struts in the center of the mounting brackets force you to put the gear to far back and is not scale. Look at your documentation and you will see that the strut comes out very close to the leading edge. Don

Chad Veich

My Feedback: (60)

Leo, I did not try and put them in the Platt kit but I looked at putting the Robarts into an 80 inch Barton/Aeroloft Mustang and it was a tight fit. The Aeroloft airplane does not have the scale airfoil so I imagine the problem would only be worse on the Platt airplane. I have built three of the Platt Mustangs, all of which use the Platt retracts with custom made struts by Sierra Precision. The struts are a thing of beauty and the Platt gear seems to be of good quality. If you do a search for Platt Mustang or my name here in the warbirds forum you should find a pic of the gear installation in my Platt Mustang. If not I will send you one if you are interested. Best of luck with it.

BobH

My Feedback: (2)

Chad, do you know if the Platt mustang is still available?. Thanks BobH.

alextran

Thanks for the info. I'm a little late in getting back, the 622's seemed too thick for the air foil like was mentioned, I called Dave Platt and Serria and ordered the Serria set up. Very nice gear!
I have to angle the gear forward and out a bit but should work good.
Darrold said I could angle it forword or he could make an adaptor that would angle the strut, I thought it might be a weak link so I decided to tip it forward a bit, it's sitll a very close set up with the narrow air foil, but I think it will work out good. I'll let you know.
Again Thank You.

Chad Veich

My Feedback: (60)

Leo, the struts that Sierra made for me have the angle machined right into the top of the strut. They have not been flown yet but I don't think there will be any weakness in the set up. If you can rotate the Platt retract enough to get the proper sweep of the struts then that would be an even better set up. I always assumed that the reason Platt did not design it that way to begin with was because there was not enough room in the wing to rotate the retract units sufficiently. The flatter the units mount in the wing the further forward they can go, or so I assumed. Let me know what you come up with on this. Best of luck with your bird.

PS- Just FYI, the full size Mustang has the same "kink" at the top of the strut. Maybe Dave did it just to be scale!