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-   -   HAND BRAKE (https://vansairforce.net/community/showthread.php?t=149008)

Wallbangar 04-26-2017 03:47 PM

HAND BRAKE
 
Any one know or heard of a hand brake design etc. for Van's aircraft ? Feet are not so good ! !

Mike Buckler 04-26-2017 04:13 PM

Ck out http://www.rv14a.com/rudder-and-brak...---sec-33.html

Wallbangar 04-26-2017 06:16 PM

hand brake
 
Wow!!!!!!!! Thanks, man. Anyone else ?

rockwoodrv9 04-26-2017 06:34 PM

There was a thread about a father making his RV rudders and brakes hand operated for his son. It was a great story and amazing engineering to make it happen. I did a quick search but could not find it. Maybe someone has it bookmarked.

Good luck.

punkin 04-26-2017 09:51 PM

Recently
 
Wasn't there an amputee that modified with dual hand brakes I saw a thread about here recently?

Canadian_JOY 04-26-2017 09:58 PM

Your choice of hand brake design really is dependent on whether you want the hand brake to completely replace or just supplement the toe brakes. Obviously it's a lot easier from a plumbing perspective to have the hand brake act as a stand-alone braking system and remove the toe brakes.

If we look at it logically, if we can have brakes on two sets of rudder pedals, there's no reason we can't add another set of brake master cylinders to be used by the hand.

Several years ago there was a wonderful fellow in Texas, Jim Newman, who built a Glastar. Jim didn't have full use of his legs and as a result he built hand brakes into the airplane. He commented that most people who flew with him were fearful of the hand brakes until they had taxied the airplane for a few hundred yards, then they seemed to get comfortable with the set up, and after that it simply wasn't an issue. For anybody who has operated a bulldozer, skid-steer loader or zero-turn lawnmower, using hand brakes would be pretty much second nature.

The Glastar has a center tunnel and Jim mounted the hand brake master cylinders vertically, if I recall, with a lever system which replicated the geometry of the rudder pedals, but with longer vertical levers to compensate for our lack of hand/arm strength as compared to our strength/ability to press toe brakes.

Good luck with your modification project!

BillL 04-27-2017 05:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wallbangar (Post 1168705)
Any one know or heard of a hand brake design etc. for Van's aircraft ? Feet are not so good ! !

Here is a post about some rv-12 controls. It might help.

http://www.vansairforce.com/communit...hlight=amputee

rmartingt 04-27-2017 06:17 AM

I've flown an A22 Valor a couple of times, and it has the brakes mounted almost like a thrust-reverser lever in front of the throttle. By the time we got to the runway the first time I had it figured out. Now, adjusting back to a high-wing fixed-pitch nosedragger was much harder, after flying nothing but an RV-6 for 10 years :o

bret 04-27-2017 08:58 AM

Been close to 200 mph many many times on the bike, and have total faith in that HAND brake!

Canadian_JOY 04-27-2017 09:28 AM

One thing I failed to mention previously... If using hand brakes, a "line lock" style of parking brake is pretty much a necessity since we want to hold the brakes while using our hands to execute the tasks required of us for run-up and pre-takeoff checks.

KRviator 04-28-2017 01:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wallbangar (Post 1168705)
Any one know or heard of a hand brake design etc. for Van's aircraft ? Feet are not so good ! !

Check out Carl Bell's writeup SODA Pilot in an old RVator. He modified his -7 with dual hand brakes.


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