Light Weight Pop Apart Landing Gear "Timex Landing Gear"

"It takes a licking and keeps on ticking"

Questions - Mail rcav8tr@juno.com

Hopefully the pictures are self explanatory as I did not want to make a bunch of hand sketches.

Features!

• This gear is self locking and gets stronger under loads as it tends to press it together. 

• On the other hand it easily pops apart on a bad landing avoiding any damage to airframe. 

• Plus it is always lighter than a traditional landing gear. 

• Another plus is that it sort of looks like a scale landing gear setup.

• No Soldering, just bending !

First Picture Shows the assemble gear on My Pico Cub, a 18 oz Airplane

Here is the underside, being I rubber band the gear on, you need to have cross pins just like a wing mount for the gear to rubber band to.   The center kris cross  bands are not necessary for the landing gear, in this case they just keep the batter pack from falling out.

Close up of the Rubber Band Mounting

Battery pack rubber bands removed to show just the landing gear mounting.

Here are 2 pictures the landing off the airframe but still assembled

Now for the details

And I have to get a bit wordy here to describe the setup.

• First step is to pick your wire size (For My 18oz Pico Cub the Music Wire Dia is .046" [3/64"] )

• 2nd brass tubing with an ID large enough to allow 3 pieces of the music to slide, can be a tight fit.

• Cut 2 pieces of the brass tubing about 1/16 to 1/" wider than the wheel hub.

• Bore out the wheels to fit easily over the ID of the brass tubing, they should rotate easily

• Cut the Cross Axle, your first piece of music wire long enough to achieve your desired wheel base plus a 1/4" each end allowance for bending at right angles to keep the wheels from sliding off.  Make sure you slide the brass tubing and the wheels onto the axle shaft before you bend both ends.

• Now the other part is sort of a cut and try until you get the configuration correct for your airplane to achieve the correct height.  But you need to bend up two wire sets as shown.

• Once you have all the pieces slide each wheel and brass tube out to the end of the axle shaft and flex / pop in the two riser struts.  Your bent up pieces should be bent outward enough to snap inside the brass tubes and still have some outward pressure to keep it all assembled.

Two Last picture showing the wires all fitted into the brass tubing with the wheel & with the wheel removed.