[redhawk]

I have a RV4 and have decided to put the larger 6:00 tires on after landing at a reasonable grass strip and feeling like I really beat up the plane. (I still have to come up with a wheel pant option that will work for the bigger tires).
Now I'm thinking I'd like a slightly larger, possibly pneumatic tailwheel tire to replace the solid rubber one I have now.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Mike S]

Well, the Scott 3200 series, or a Maule unit are pretty much standard for lots of brush planes.

Problem is, cost-----and weight.

If you can live with the above two issues, then one of these tail wheels should do you fine.

Way overkill however, as far as I am concerned., but I dont know of anything else.

Hopefully someone out there will know of a better unit.

Good luck.

 

[LarryT]

380x150-5 tires

Have you considered this tire. It would fit on the 5" wheel and have about 1/2" larger rolling radius. Plus I think it uses lower tire pressure, which would make it more enveloping.

There was a post awhile back from a builder in the UK that was trying that solution. I don't know if the existing wheel pants can be modified so they can be used when not flying into the backcountry.

 

[redhawk]

tires

Hi Larry,
That actually is the exact tire I am putting on my mains - I reverted back to my old Cessna brain when I said 6:00 tires !
Dick

 

[N916K]

Now I'm thinking I'd like a slightly larger, possibly pneumatic tailwheel tire to replace the solid rubber one I have now.
Does anyone have any suggestions?

Going from the Van's tail hook to the Bell tail wheel fork will give you two or three times the fork clearance.

 

[Mike S]

One other thought here-------as you go up in tire size, you also increase the weight out on the end of the landing gear.

And rolling resistance/drag during ground ops.

At some point, these increases could bite you

I suspect only one or two sizes up wont make enough difference to matter, but????

Any engineers out there have anything to add?

 

[N916K]

One other thought here-------as you go up in tire size, you also increase the weight out on the end of the landing gear.

And rolling resistance/drag during ground ops.

At some point, these increases could bite you

I suspect only one or two sizes up wont make enough difference to matter, but????

Any engineers out there have anything to add?

Actually increased diameter could help quite a bit. Especially on rough terrain. A larger diameter tire rolls much better over terrain. The tire will roll over the impact instead of loading up the gear leg in the aft direction. The best situation would be to have a tall skinny tire to improve rolling performance but limit frontal area. Of course the skinny tire won't help much in soft conditions. To improve that you would have to decrease the pressure of the tire. The tire would then have to get wider to maintain the rolling diameter to keep the rolling performance at the lower tire pressure. So it looks like we have designed a large diameter, wide, flotation tire. Sounds like a Super Cub tire.

Personally I would fly the plane to the current limits and not try to force an RV to be a super cub. The RV already does a great job of threading the needle of several different performance categories. Let the high wing bush planes have their day.