Comet Sailplane
Project
Landing Gear Modification
As I was looking at the assembled Sailplane
today, I suddenly became aware that the landing gear cross wire was too
close to the bottom of the cowl and had too big of an arch in it as shown in
an earlier construction picture below. In a hard landing, the landing gear
would spread out too far and then snap back probably driving the cross wire
up into the bottom of the cowl and damaging it.
There was nothing to do but to disassemble the
front end of the Sailplane's fuselage and remove the landing gear. A Dremel
cut off wheel was used to cut the cooper wire wrappings of the cross wire
ends, unsolder it, and remove it. 80% of the arch in the cross wire was
taken out, leaving a shallow bow as shown below. The ends of the modified
cross wire were wrapped with cooper wire as shown below and later soldered.
The modified landing gear was reinstalled and the
front end of the Sailplane's fuselage was assembled. The modified cross wire
is now almost 2" below the bottom of the cowl and will limit the spread of
the landing gear on a hard landing as shown below.
Wing Trailing Edge Protector Plate
I use a protector plate to keep the multiple
rubber bands that hold the wing on from crushing the wing's training edge.
The plate is made out of a piece of .008" tin and has a small lip that wraps
around the trailing edge. I called my friend Jerry Burk yesterday and he
loaned me his little hand brake shown below to bend in the lip with.
This shows a close up of the initial bend in the
plate using the hand brake.
This shows the finished protector plate. The lip
is only bent to an angle of about 80 to 85 degrees to fit the trailing edge
profile.
Dow Corning clear silicone shown below is used to
attach the protection plate to the wing's trailing edge. The excess is
cleaned off with alcohol which does not hurt the wing's finish.
This shows the protection plate bonded to the
wing's trailing edge.
This picture shows how the protection plate's lip
wraps around the trailing edge and keeps the multiple rubber bands that hold
the wing on from crushing the wing's training edge...................Tandy
