Shaun Simpkins wrote:
> >>The installation looks very clean and quite simple. As compared to,
> say, an RV, the plane appears more squat.Of course, so does the
> monowheel. The closest other design in appearance I can think of is
> the Rand KR-2.
>
> Both Bob's and the swiss gear have a low deck angle - whether this is
> the way to go depends on various factors - primarily, I suspect,
> aileron effectiveness around the stall. The average I have come up
> with - on RV's and a range of other taildraggers - is around 10.5. I
> believe the Swiss gear is nearer 7, the XS about 8. >>I'm sure it
> could save weight over the monowheel installation.
>
> Moot point: feeding landing loads into the original structure
> (fuselage skin) and dissapating them is problematical - lots of area
> lots of weight, the problem with the swiss gear... I am having to
> conduct peel tests (new to old structures) to prove a cunning trick to
> keep the weight down - and if I can manage to keep the weight the same
> overall, I'll be fairly pleased.
>
> >>It will be interesting to see how much more drag than the monowheel,
> and whether the weight savings cancel out a lot of the difference. At
> this time, HB-YIB is the only conventional gear installation flying,
> and it has so many other mods that direct comparisons will be
> impossible.
We are planning a direct comparison for wt and performance with my
conversion - hopefully modifying a currently flying monowheel this
winter. As for performance, my betting is that it will be better than
the monowheel.... the reason being that when I flew G-YURO (the
prototype) way back, the gear and flaps were on different levers, so as
an experiment I trimmed for 100kt clean, and then dropped the
monowheel.... and got no speed reduction.
I'm hoping to get the final figures on the stress analysis next week -
and get started with the first installation - it's taken a bit longer
than planned as I fiddled with the bulkead configuration half way
through the calculations... which pissed off the stress engineer
somewhat as he had to start from scratch again.
all the best,
Miles
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