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Landing Gear and Side Skin Update 13 Nov

R

rgmwa

Well Known Member
From Vans:

RV-12 LANDING GEAR CHANNEL AND SIDE SKIN UPDATE…November 13, 2012
Van’s engineering and shop crews have been working diligently to finish up the modification procedure that will improve the durability of the RV-12 landing gear support structure.
We understand that some of your aircraft have been grounded while waiting for this modification and we appreciate your patience and apologize for the ‘down time’.
Design and documentation are now finished. We are currently waiting for delivery of some of the necessary components that we’ll need to include in the materials kit. Once those are in hand, Van’s will release the documentation and automatically deliver parts to affected kit/aircraft owners. There is no need to contact Van’s Aircraft to order the parts. We hope to have all necessary components in house and ready for delivery by the end of November.
Van’s is producing sufficient quantities of parts to supply all affected kits/aircraft. Delivery priority will be given to flying aircraft and those that are near inspection. However, we anticipate that we will be able to ship to all affected customers in a timely manner.
Once again, thank you for your patience.
Van’s Aircraft, Inc.

Edit:
Maintenance Manual and PAP have also been updated to include relevant checks.
http://vansaircraft.com/pdf/revisions/RV-12/User_Manuals/MM-R1.pdf
http://vansaircraft.com/pdf/revisions/RV-12/User_Manuals/PAP-R3.pdf
 
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This is good news.

This is good news and - it proves once again that Van's is on top of things and very interested in improving their product. Thanks for the post.
 
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E. D. Eliot said:
This is good news and - it proves once again that Van's is on top of things and very interested in improving their product. Thanks for the post.
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It would be good to know what they did in their recent testing that enabled them to simulate the skin failures that others had experienced, and why their initial design and tests didn't pick that up. Doubt that we will find out however, but all credit to them for investigating and fixing the problem.
 
Hope to see what is involved in the mod soon

I hope they post the modification instructions soon--before they get the modification kits out--so we know what we're up against...I'm very close to inspection time, so I suspect this will slow things down a bit.
 
rgmwa said:
It would be good to know what they did in their recent testing that enabled them to simulate the skin failures that others had experienced, and why their initial design and tests didn't pick that up. Doubt that we will find out however, but all credit to them for investigating and fixing the problem.
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I think they mentioned at one point in this recent adventure that nothing happened up to the level required by ASTM standards which is what they initially designed for. That said, they moved beyond those standards and discovered the cause.
 
Peterk said:
I think they mentioned at one point in this recent adventure that nothing happened up to the level required by ASTM standards which is what they initially designed for. That said, they moved beyond those standards and discovered the cause.
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That's true, but I would just be interested to know what they did and how far beyond the ASTM requirements they had to go to cause failure, and whether the tests suggested that the real world problems were likely the result of landing too hard, braking, skidding, rough surface or whatever.
 
Now more forgiving

Designing something to meet a known stress in just math.
knowing all the loads that may or may not be applied to something is a designers nightmare.

Vans has now designed the gear to meet some of the strange loads that may be applied in a nonstandard landing and will make the aircraft more forgiving.
It is just that simple
 
Agree

Van's is responding to the need to improve the bird.
Non-standard landings or not, this add will make the Rv-12 stronger and that should help us all.

I still think that the RV-12 SLSA could be the C-150-152 of the future with flight schools, etc. Time will tell.:cool:
 
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