chapter_09_2

Chapter 9: Installing Landing Gear


Lessons Learned:

1.  Details of the plates and the tube. Not having the spot-facing tool, I thought I was in big trouble, except I discovered that my large grinder bit for my dremel tool is exactly 5/8th inches. What luck! I used that bit and an offset drill to ream out the holes to size. Again, I had to go really slow because things got really hot. DO NOT cool a dremel grinder bit in water. I didn't try it myself, but I bet the bit would crack or shatter and cause bodily harm to you later.

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2. Do yourself a favor and stencil the positions and orientation of the plates. It's the only way you'll remember where they go after you've alodined and painted the plates!

3.  This is the setup I used to verify forward sweep, centering, and to locate the position of the axles. (They're hard to see, but I've got plumb lines hanging from the gear.) As explained in Chapter 9 FAQ, the "exercise of geometric futility" is supposed to locate the gear correctly when you get to this point. Ahh, yeah right. Actually, I consider myself lucky. On initial fitting prior to opening the LG bulkhead holes to full size, all but one hole was dead on the money. The forward sweep on the gear is absolutely correct, but if you want to sweat the details, one gear leg ended up 0.3 inches shorter (which was trimmed out later) and 0.1 inches closer to the fuselage centerline than the other. Close enough I'd say.

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