Degaussing

[TShort]

I know there was a discussion about this recently ... I'm posting this for someone from the 170 forums to see if you guys had any ideas:

"This non 170 [RV] related but is aircraft related, I need to find plans or a formula to determine the winding and power supply to make a large degausser to demagnetize a nose landing gear on a B757. The aircraft experienced a lightning strike that magnetized the landing gear so every time the gear retracts it's throwing the standby compass 15-20 deg off.
I located the magnetized parts but the hand held degaussers not strong enough.
I know there are a lot of brainiacs here in the forums, and my knowlage on magnetisim is on the weak side so anyhelp would be great as our engineers and senior management want's to just replace the landing gear to eliminate the problem, I as a hourly technician would like to build a degausser to demagnetize the nose gear than replace it"

Thanks!

[Paul Eastham]

Call Boeing for advice, perhaps?

If you're out of warranty, you could search around on the web for how to make an electromagnet with a coil of wire and AC current. I imagine that you can scale the size of the coil and perhaps even the current if you're really brave.

Also note that the pattern of application of the magnet seems to matter -- I had much better luck with rapidly applying and removing the magnet to the affected areas.