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nosegear

bobnoffs

Well Known Member
i am trying to find out how much travel up and down the nosewheel is capable of . also, does anyone have any observations or data on how the distance to the prop changes during the travel. any help appreciated.
 
Suggestion... Place airplane on saw horses to suspend gear and kick front tire and see how much it moves fore / aft.

You might be surprised...
 
When I was in the nuke industry I had a particularly brilliant engineer working for me that was always coming up with new and expensive inspections we could perform on our steam generators. I told him that if he couldn’t tell me what we would do different based on the results they were a waste of time and money. He grumbled, but it did reduce the number of science projects.

What would you do different based on the data requested?
 
do i see my old gear lag bolted to a post in my hangar with a scissors jack and a scale under it?
 
Watch the RV-12 gear tests that Van's did on the RV-12, the nose gear deflection upward on impact looks minimal vs the splayed maingear. Looks like a flat front tire would be worse for prop tip to ground clearance than nosegear deflection from a hard landing.

John Salak
RV-12 N896HS
 
Come on guys. If you cant grease this thing its time for a new hobby.
Even in that old video with Mitch flying the -12 he mentions that this is without a doubt the easiest landing plane he has ever flown. I agree. It’s is not an off airport Stol
 
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it's not a rotex engine. with the extension i have my clearance to the prop is 2 11/16. a rotax is 4'' to the wheel pants.
 
My concern would be if you got a flat front tire, and landed, would you have enough prop clearance to not have a prop strike?

A heavier motor is something Van's might not have envisioned, since they designed the plane about the weight of the Rotax 912 series motor, as an E-LSA.
 
Original design targets

actually, I've been told, they didnt design around the Rotax. There were several engines being considered, and they designed around the heaviest one. The Rotax is way lighter than the design limit.
And...I can back that up! I got it from a friend who is married to a girl who knew somebody at VANs who had a friend in the shipping department who knew a guy at the supermarket that interviewed to work at VANs but was rejected for no useable skill.
Gotta be true!
 
actually, I've been told, they didnt design around the Rotax. There were several engines being considered, and they designed around the heaviest one. The Rotax is way lighter than the design limit.
And...I can back that up! I got it from a friend who is married to a girl who knew somebody at VANs who had a friend in the shipping department who knew a guy at the supermarket that interviewed to work at VANs but was rejected for no useable skill.
Gotta be true!

Yeah, but did you ever notice they used the "way lighter" version of the motor, and then, redesigned the front landing gear making it beefier, after it fractured/developed a crack in a flight school with 1800 hours on the airframe, on the SLSA version with the light 912 ULS motor, not the porky 912 IS fuel injected motor? One has to ask/wonder if that's part of Van's redesign for the front landing gear?

Would you want a Jabiru 3300 120 hp 6 cylinder up front on a grass field, with potential gopher holes and 5" wheels, and that landing gear up front? Gotta get some air speed before you can get the nose even floating off of the grass, in an E-AB build?
 
actually, I've been told, they didnt design around the Rotax. There were several engines being considered, and they designed around the heaviest one. The Rotax is way lighter than the design limit.

And...I can back that up!

I’m not clear on how you will do that because it is totally false.
 
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