Warbird Landing Gear Woes

[skyraider52]

I have four warbirds, all with the same problem and am hoping one of you guys can help.

Landing gear..... I've built and flown four different 60 sized warbirds over the last few years and have never been able to resist the temptation of installing retracts. Our flying field is grass and fairly brutal on the retracts. After a couple of flights on all of my models, I've yanked the retracts and installed fixed landing gear. It's cheaper.

My question is this. Does anyone manufacture fixed (main) landing gear configured like nose gear wires (with the wire coil)? "Straight leg" main gear tend to destroy the torque blocks rather quickly in all my warbirds. I was hoping that the coiled landing gear would dampen the shocks enough to minimize landing damage. I've tried fabricating coiled landing gear wires myself, without much success. Can anyone help?

[The Blue Max]

Obviously you have access to a computer, try looking at some different kits available and find one that has the type of coiled landing gear you want and buy straight from the manufacturer or the kit distributor if they carry spare parts.

[The Blue Max]

I had a Dynaflite 81" Spitfire that was my favorite plane for several years and every time I flew it off of a rough grass field I either bent the gear legs or damaged the gear mount. I finally fixed the problem by removing the bottom wing sheeting and building new plywood ribs in place of the balsa ribs with small reinforcing plates made out of plywood. I also used the wing rib reinforcing plates with tabs cut into them for tabs in the multi-layer laminated plywood landing gear mounts. I also eventually mounted Robo-struts that help dampen the shock of landing on a rough field. This is all very hard to do in an already built airplane but if you make your modifications during the building of the plane you will end up with very strong mounts that should be trouble free, if you do manage to damage them then you hit hard enough that you probably should be looking at other parts of the plane for damage.