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[Spinnetti]

Hi all. Not sure why, but landing gear seems most interesting part on many airplanes. In R/C airplanes, nobody makes decent landing gear for small (1/13) sized airplanes, so I decided to make real working landing gear as scale as I can for my R/C planes.... So far, have done FW190, Me262 and my latest and most fun (includes retract system) the He-111. My latest model is not yet done, but prototype works well. This is a pretty complicated machine. All of the links are as exact scale length I could get, as well as the strut details.

This is the 3d model, and I'm building the real ones now. I hope to get most of the latest version this weekend, but am waiting on some tooling and the air cylinder.


This was my first prototype. It works good, but the details weren't as nice as I liked

[norm]

Ooooooooooh, could you put up vid showing the motion?

[Verhängnis]

Just curious but how do you get these made from the 3D program?

[Spinnetti]

Ooooooooooh, could you put up vid showing the motion?

Yeah, I thought I did one, but I guess not. Its kinda hard to hold them and actuate them while running the camera Will be easier when I put the air cylinder on it. The motion is just like the real thing. As I made the linkages like the real thing, it was easy to see when I got something wrong - it wouldn't work at all! - I learned a good appreciation for the real designers and the design compromises necessary to get the motion desired.

Verhangnis, I used photos and drawings for the dimensions, Solidworks for the modeling, and plain old engineering to make it all work right. the Oleos are sprung too, and will absorb about 15kg of landing load (+ the airplane weight) before fully compressing.

[Verhängnis]

oOh very cool

[Spinnetti]

quick update....

Originally, I had just "dummy" oleos - they looked right, but were unsprung. I modified one of the legs to try make it sprung, but with dummy shock bellows, and today I made it full sprung, with scale travel (haven't made the shock belllows yet).



Here's a pic with the solid one, the sprung proto with dummy bellows, and the latest sprung one (left to right) and a picture of the prototype in retracted position. also a picture of my 190 gear (also 1/13 scale with working oleo - these are all done, but I need to design scale retracts for them).

[Flanker35M]

S!

 True craftmanship there! Very nice!

[Verhängnis]

Very nice work there, hope to see the final product.

[Spinnetti]

Very nice work there, hope to see the final product.

There's a couple detail differences when I make the next set (including fancier rubber wheels with aluminum hubs), but this is basically the final functional design using the Luftwaffe nomenclature, "A1"


(sorry  - picture from my phone)

[Spinnetti]

Finished the next generation of this gear, with even more scale detail, and with better durability using stainless steel legs. Also a teaser of what's next, which is near fully scale gear in 1/6th size for really big RC models.

[Verhängnis]

Pure awesomeness! Do you have any other projects - on the side, or previous?

[Spinnetti]

Pure awesomeness! Do you have any other projects - on the side, or previous?

Thanks... For some reason I really like designing and making landing gear, particularly Luftwaffe stuff in various sizes, currently 1/13 and also starting on 1/6 scale. I also only like making the gear that is interesting in some way, not just tubes with wheels on them, and that is machinable. Some gear is all formed and welded, and right now, I won't be doing those. I bought a decent CNC mill and have a CNC lathe too. Over time, I'll buy a better CNC lathe as well. I just buy the raw aluminum and steel and carve away everything that doesn't look like landing gear It will take me years to get through all the Luftwaffe stuff, and then I'll branch out doing the most complex stuff like Lancaster or jet stuff unless somebody is really hot for something else and wants to pay me right for it. This is really just my "winter hobby". In the summer I race cars, so don't do that much then. Today in fact, I'll work on one of the race cars a bit, then go down into the shop to work on my 1/6 scale Fw-189 Gear. I made the dampers/shock absorbers and am working on the trailing links now, trying to figure out all the programming for the cnc..