Profile landing gear

Hi guys,

I'm building a Brodak Super Clown profile. The gear shown and supplied is bent piano wire. Should I replace it with some sheet aluminum? Thinking of duplicating the gear that is on the RSM Ringmaster. It seemed to hold up pretty well, if a bit bouncy on landings.

BTW, son Mikey finally did a lazy eight, with some help from friend Bill! Everybody says he is a natural, sure doesn't get any of it from me! Think he lost a bit of concentration after the manuever and got too low. Repairs needed to stab, gear and undercarriage. That metal gear just flattened out instead of throwing the plane back into the air as misic wire would have done. Muffler poked a hole in the tank. Oh well, it was too big anyway and I do enjoy building tanks.

John in the PRC

FWIW: I built one of the first Brodak Super Clowns, and have never had a problem with the kit gear.
Bill Little <><

Stick with the stock Clown piano wire LG. There is nothing wrong with it. Landings can be greased with this type of gear.

I built one too. I am running an OS FP.25. Don't add flaps if you plan on using it for OTS. Those point deductions is a killer. My Super Clown is the first one from the right.
Jay

I tried one of the commercial profile aluminum gears. After it broke from flexing in normal landings, I replaced it with a wire gear and have had no problems.

>I tried one of the commercial profile aluminum gears. After it broke from flexing
>in normal landings, I replaced it with a wire gear and have had no problems.

Back before CL took its last, and most major, nosedive, Fox-Goldberg racing was flown at a good percentage of CL contests I could go to, and I would compete in those sometimes. I put a dural gear, bent from SIG blanks (I used two for one profile set, to have a good enough bolt- through surface on each side), on a particular Shoestring.

Just doing practice for pitting, I mashed that gear down many times. I sometimes was told it was an illegal modification at some contests, and flew a back up CG plane instead, but that particular gear never showed any kind of fatigue where it was bent, rebent, etc. so often.

This, then, is by way of saying that it seems there are dural gears & then there are DURAL GEARS, and they differ.

.
Kiwi

I have to stock landing gear on my superclown and it has hundreds of flights on it the gear. It wore the holes you have to drill but it holds up well. I just put a new one on mine.