Originally Posted by Tim Semeraro

Ive found its easier on the LG if you fly from the parking lot next to the field..

Its like my grandfather said(rest his soul), when the Doctor told him to stay out of the sun, and he couldn't Golf..

The old Man said, without missing a beat... "ILL PLAY THE SHADE"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssUP3...ature=youtu.be

I totally agree, if you can takeoff and land in a nice smooth lot it's a big help in not breaking the lg. Unfortunately the only places I have to fly are really rough soccer fields, and the stock gear in my MXS just couldn't take it. Maybe I just got a particularly weak one or something, but in my 3DHS 48" planes I have hundreds of landings without any problems. I have only broken one lg in these planes and that was a hard pancake from about 50ft up when and esc burned out in my VR-1. For now I have robbed a set from one of these planes and put the repaired one from the VR-1 in that plane since I don't fly it much anymore. When the original lg on my MXS broke it was from hitting a divot in the sod from the soccer player's spikes chewing up the ground, not from a hard landing. I'm not whining about the quality of the gear or even thinking it's junk or anything like that. It's just that in my particular case it's not strong enough, and if it was just a little bit stronger would work fine for me.

Personally I would find a new place to fly..


If you Want to make the gear stronger the best thing to do is wrap the ankles with Kevlar thread, and soak it with thin CA..

If you do this before they break, they will last for ever! It also works good as a repair.. I have two old Edge LG's that I wrapped and they work fine, in case of emergency. Just make sure to CA the LG block.. Because Somthing has to give..

I always did this with my 42" slick LG and they never broke at the bend.

Originally Posted by Tim Semeraro

Personally I would find a new place to fly..


If you Want to make the gear stronger the best thing to do is wrap the ankles with Kevlar thread, and soak it with thin CA..

If you do this before they break, they will last for ever! It also works good as a repair.. I have two old Edge LG's that I wrapped and they work fine, in case of emergency. Just make sure to CA the LG block.. Because Somthing has to give..

I always did this with my 42" slick LG and they never broke at the bend.

I was thinking about doing this, and I actually have some loose cf fiber to do it with. But as long as I had the 3DHS gear on hand I figured what the heck I'll give it a whirl. I wish I could find a better place to fly, but around here the only places that aren't forrested are pretty much soccer fields. And around here they are so nuts about soccer they are almost constantly in use. There is a nice club I am going to join, but the field is a good fifteen miles from where I live so it's out of the question for anything but weekend flying. I like to get in some flights after work, but in rush hour traffic here it would take me an hour and a half just to get there. The lg isn't that big a deal for me anyway since all I want to fly anymore is my lovely 60" Edge, and that thing handles the rough terrain like it's not even there. The strength of the lg versus the strength of the lg plate is perfect on the 60 and is no problem at all where I fly.

I know the gear on my 3DHS 71" AJ Slick is very beefy and when I was at a 3DHS flying I saw several people tear up the fuselage on some pancakes but the gear was untouched. Make be wonder if the stronger gear is good from a standpoint of no de-lamination but maybe one should use nylon bolts to shear and preserve the fuse. Anyone try using nylon bots for the gear?

I have been tearing up the Skys on our 4th blowout!! Mainly the 70 Extra and the 48 and 60 Edge.. Bad Bill was impressed with the 60.. He loves it..

Time to fly... LATER!!!!

I've broken the CF landing gear a couple of times and the best way to repair them is push the broken pieces back together and glue with a thin coat of 30min epoxy. While the epoxy is still tacky use some normal black cotton and wind it around about half an inch ether side of the brake. It will look something like a fishing rod when your done. Let the first cote of epoxy dry with the wound cotton embedded and then put a second cote of epoxy over the top and let dry. It comes up very strong and the black cotton blends in and you can hardly notice the repair.

You can also cut the thin parts off where they break on both sides. Then rebend them over a solering iron or in a vice with heat. Makes then a little shorter but they never break again. That's a Dan Poole trick from SEFF.

Originally Posted by Ohio AV8TOR

I know the gear on my 3DHS 71" AJ Slick is very beefy and when I was at a 3DHS flying I saw several people tear up the fuselage on some pancakes but the gear was untouched. Make be wonder if the stronger gear is good from a standpoint of no de-lamination but maybe one should use nylon bolts to shear and preserve the fuse. Anyone try using nylon bots for the gear?

I have heard of people doing this, but they drilled out the gear and removed the nuts from the plate and drilled them out and mounted larger nuts to accomodate a larger bolt. I would imagine you would definitely need a larger bolt to have enough strength to work for some fairly rough landings but weak enough to break at the right amount of stress. I have also heard of people cutting part way through the steel bolts so they are just strong enough to hold under all but the most stress of a rough landing, and yet will break away in time to save the gear and fuse. Either of these methods would take some experimenting but are feasible if you want to spend the time fooling with it.

Originally Posted by Ohio AV8TOR

..... maybe one should use nylon bolts to shear and preserve the fuse. Anyone try using nylon bots for the gear?

Those work great, except the gear will rotate back and the back of the wheel pants will punch up through the bottom of the wing. Seen it happen all the time when guys pull the gear out. If you don't run the pants that will be no problem, but sometimes the gear will come back and wreck the stab.

We ran nylon bolts all the time on Mini Ultra Sticks, Mini Pulses, and ever our 60 size nitro Ugly Sticks, and they worked fine. About one time in a hundred the gear would hit the stab, but outside of that it saved a lot of planes.

Just remember that if the gear comes off, odds are really high you're going to take out the bottom of the wings, and maybe even punch all the way through the top too.

Manta would mucho rather break the gear on my sucky landings than break the landing gear block or da fuse.FWIW I harrier landed/plopped my 48 edge lots and lots of times and it took me selling the plane to Powerlines before the plane would die. He could tear up an iron anvil out in a plowed field with a pillow tho.

Best bet is to concentrate on smooth landings and don't fly out of really rough places. You made the investment in a nice plane....invest in a club with a nice runway.

Barring that, if you fly out of a rough place, you're going to have gear failures. Our old runway was so rough that I broke wheels all the time. Every so often a gear would fail on a good landing, but that was just from accumulativfe stress. Carbon will, in facr, fatigue out if you treat it badly enough.

I bounce my planes alot falling out of harriers and hovers and such. I fly low, so the consequences are multiplied. If you make a mistake and it's going to hit, you know when you aren't going to get out of it, so you have to go into damage limitation mode. Get the wings level. Getting the wings level before it hits spreads the shock load and torsional forces out across both legs. If you hit on the front of just one wheel, I guarantee you are going to do some sort of damage. It might be just a wheel or wheel pant, but it's still going to be a lot of force applied to just one spot, which is never good.

You'll see me bounce my planes sometimes in the video. Notice most of the time it hits with the wings level (if I am successful). This is part of why I don't have a lot of gear trouble.

I've seen some people say they snapped their gear on a seemingly small impact. I suppose that could be so, but the times that has happened to me it was after banging it really hard earlier in the day and wondering how I got away with it. If you crack a carbon gear, it doesn't heal itself. That area just fatigues and fails.

Originally Posted by Doc Austin

Best bet is to concentrate on smooth landings and don't fly out of really rough places.

This says it all.How many of us devote our flights to touch and goes??=landing practice?This is important.I know they are boring,but not really if you have the right attitude towards it.It can be challenging and fun.Practice touching down smoothly in a prechosen spot on the runway.and try to touch down same spot every time.Its harder than it may seem.we all tend to practice the 3d stuff because it is fun and has wow factor.Our own pilot skills require maintenance from time to time for the basics I think.Mine dang shore do

Every time I fly I try to do at least 10 extra takeoffs and landings or touch and go's. And I agree with Doc, usually it's the landings that are a little off and you bang one wheel that destroy's them. Aside from wrecking my MXS lg I have only broken one set one other time. So I really have been lucky so far.

I guess no one complaining about landing gear has ever had a Mini Funtana.

And those who have, let that sink in for a second. Want to go back to that? Are we grateful for what we have now or what?

Well, i finally got to maiden the edge! Batteries came on Saturday so I soldered them up with deans and headed out to the field only to find 25mph gusting 35-40mph winds with a crosswind. So I waited for a while and nothing changed, so I was pretty bummed. Later that night I got a call from Daniel Holman that they were planning on going flying and that I should come out, so I made the trip up the river and got to the field a little early. The winds there were even worse! around 40mph! So I called Daniel and told him about the wind and he says, no problem, we are used to it. It was really hard to get the planes put together because with the wind if you were holding a wing, it'd just about blow you over! Daniel brought his 110" yak and Michael brought is 50cc extra and man, they are both just out of this world pilots as well as being some of the nicest people I've ever met. There is nothing like seeing rolling harriers right of the deck from one end of the runway to the other, BACKWARDS, in the wind! I asked Daniel if he would take a pull on my edge and he really broke it in with style, a couple of beautiful KE spins and some really pretty snaps. I didn't fly my plane in that ridiculous wind but, my field was on the way home so I stopped by and got to put 5 or 6 packs through the Edge. I'm in love, I have a lot and I mean a lot to learn but this plane has already given me the confidence to try things.