In this episode
Join us for the main discussion, practical takeaways, and stories from this episode of RC Plane Lab.
Episode 65 Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are retained.
Read the full transcript
[0:00] Hello everyone, welcome to RC Plane Lab. I'm Ron. I'm Tom. As you can tell if you're watching on YouTube by our menagerie, I guess, of… That's a good word for it. Actually. Stuff sitting out on the desk. We were talking about landing gear today from the floats that Tom has from an old, what do you say it was, an old cub? Piper Cub. Old Piper Cub that apparently he has no more, but the floats that Tom has from an old, what do you say it was, an old cub? Piper cub.
[0:29] An old Piper cub that apparently he has no more, but the floats are here, so I don't know what happened to it. I sold the airplane on landing gear a long time ago. Sold it, of course. You didn't crash it, I'm sure. No, I never crashed that one. I've crashed plenty, but not that one. To a small pair of landing gear that I have out here from a small plane that actually i don't even know what that one's from probably probably all the way up to the the
[0:53] landing gear off my my big yak pretty much dominates the table we have here well it's made to look a lot smaller with your your floats out here but that's okay had to balance it out all yellow by the way i just noticed that oh it is all yellow and they're not all cubs no that's so anyway popular landing gear is what we're going to be talking about today yeah but before we get
[1:19] into that a couple housekeeping items i want to talk about. First off, there's a new survey out. If you haven't filled that out yet, please go fill it out. Yeah, if you wouldn't mind, like I always say, help us help you. Filling out those surveys is a surefire way to get us talking about what you want to listen to. I mean, couldn't have said it better myself. Well, thank you. Anything else
[1:44] you want to say on the survey? No, just fill them out. And like I said, I't have said it better myself. Well, thank you. Anything else you want to say on the survey? No, just fill them out. And like I said, I appreciate the input, good or bad. If you've got constructive criticism, we certainly take that in stride and try to incorporate that into the show. And then the next thing we want to talk about, this might not be as popular. However, we are taking a break.
[2:05] There will be no new episodes released in May. And that's kind of to give us some time to get caught up on some things that we've been wanting to do around the house. It's nice out. We want to go fly. We're taking a vacation. I mean, everybody's entitled to a vacation from their job usually. So we're going to take the month of May off and not provide any content. We may take a random opportunity to put some stuff on the YouTube channel like how-tos.
[2:29] We may continue that sort of thing or hopefully some flight videos. We're going to hopefully do some flight. If weather works, I agree. It's so windy here. I wanted to fly today. You already know where to go. Well, yeah. But that's okay. And then also coming in june we're going to start doing a release every two weeks as opposed to weekly once again there's a lot of time and effort that goes into doing this that goes into editing that goes into preparing that goes into
[3:00] figuring out what to talk about yeah and we want to go fly and have some fun. So we're not going anywhere. We're just going to take some time off. We will be back. No, we're not quitting at all. I know I have a lot of fun with this, and Ron does too, even though he puts in a lot of hours with the editing. But, yeah, we're going to take some time off and then spread out the episodes starting in June to every other week so that we can we can fly and
[3:25] hopefully come up with more content to give you guys and then and build some stuff yeah and then when the flying season is is past us and we pick back up in the fall with our weekly weekly schedule yeah so once it gets darker earlier and we start to have less time to go outside and do things and less stuff to do because it's summer we'll get back to our weekly weekly release yeah
[3:46] yeah so so that's the big news anyway yeah i hope everybody's okay with that if not well you will be because we'll be back and it'll be just okay yeah so this will allow us to to catch up on some projects and hopefully we'll get to start some other projects that we had planned so and for that we need time and unfortunately the time that it takes to edit these episodes is great which doesn't leave a lot of extra time to start some of these other projects so yeah
[4:16] that's the big news but today today we're going to talk about landing gear let's get started all right hey listen not not all in not all airplanes have landing gear but they should well i mean it's a lot more fun to take off i think to take an airplane off of the runway yeah then throw it in the air i agree and it's it's i don't want to say an essential skill but it's so important to know how to taxi, to know how to do all that kind of stuff.
[4:47] Because let's be honest, most of the bigger airplanes, most of the scale type airplanes, anything really once you get out of foamies are going to have landing gear. Yeah, they are. So it's a good idea to know how to fly off of landing gear. Yeah. landing gear. Yeah. And so, if so equipped, basically, if you didn't already know, the landing gear is what allows the airplane to safely, keyword safely, contact the ground.
[5:20] Without being torn to shreds. Without being torn to shreds or broken in half or what have you. But yeah, the landing gear facilitates that safe contact with the ground, either from takeoff to flight or from the reverse of that, from flight to the landing. Lots of different types of landing gear out there. I mean, if you just do a quick landing gear search in Google, oh my gosh, page after page after page, and they all kind of look different.
[5:43] page after page after page, and they all kind of look different. But they can kind of be sorted into a few different types, which is what we're going to talk about. We've got basically conventional gear, which is the – it's not so conventional anymore, but conventional gear actually refers to tail draggers. So you've got a set of main gear,
[6:03] and then you've got the tail back there with a tail wheel or a skid or whatever just kind of dragging the ground. That's why they're called tail draggers. So you've got a set of main gear and then you've got the tail back there with a tail wheel or a skid or whatever, just kind of dragging the ground. That's why they're called tail draggers. That used to be the conventional gear, went way, way back in
[6:14] aviation when airplanes were first being produced. They were all, tail draggers. It's easier to manufacture. Yes. Lighter too, because you don't have a nose wheel and all that sort of stuff. But that's actually called conventional gear. So a tail dragger is synonymous with conventional gear. So then you also have tricycle-type landing gear, which is what is kind of the convention now, which is basically a set of mains with a nose wheel. Which I guess technically they're both
[6:45] tricycles if you think about it that's true i mean i i yeah because if you have a tail wheel then you still have three wheels that's true that's absolutely true i feel lied to my whole life i mean like really i guess i don't i don't understand that why yeah they could both be called tricycle but tricycle is the is the general naming convention for an aircraft that has a nose gear of some kind tricycle landing gear actually did
[7:12] hasn't always been part of rc even though rc doesn't go as far back as aviation does full-size aviation it goes back quite a ways mean, since there's been full-size airplanes, there's been people making small airplanes to model after them. But tricycle landing gear in the RC really didn't kind of come on until like the early, late 60s, early 70s. And it kind of came on then because of the advent of multi-channel RC. Because, you have a nose wheel,
[7:47] you have to control it with a channel rudder, usually. So back in the early days of RC, we didn't have all these extra channels to work with. So, I mean, I'm talking like escapement and these other types of RCs where you basically had one channel that you could control, and that channel was usually a little bit more important than a nose gear. So yeah, in the late 60s, early 70s, when the multi-channel RC kind of came on the
[8:12] market, it was cool to have a tricycle landing gear back then. So for a long time, from the 70s through the 70s and 80s, a lot of new airplanes at the time, RC airplanes, were designed as tricycle landing gear because that was cool. You were cool if you had a tricycle landing gear. Because you could do it now. Yeah, exactly. But then nowadays, it doesn't seem to be, the 6-in-1, half a dozen, the other.
[8:40] It seems to be a lot of interesting classic airplanes these days, and most of those are going to be tail draggers. And I think tail draggers are cool anyway. We're building a tail dragger. Yes, we are. A big one. Eventually. What do you prefer, though? Do you prefer the flight characteristics and taking off? Do you prefer a tail dragger, or do you prefer the tricycle? Honestly, I prefer tail draggers. It adds another dimension. I mean, it's another
[9:09] thing you have to be aware of for takeoff and landing and things like that. So it adds a little bit more of a challenge maybe. And me personally, I just like the clean look of a tail dragger. you don't have that nose gear sticking out of the nose out there into the airstream. Tail draggers, they just look a little sleeker to me especially when you had wheel pants and things like that yeah so i i think i prefer i prefer tail draggers how about you i think i
[9:35] would kind of agree it depends on the airplane but i think i've kind of proven that i like tail group or tail draggers a little bit more because I converted the duelist that's true you did successfully yeah but yeah so that's and then another type of gear is retractable landing gear which is a whole other animal that that we'll address maybe in the next episode
[9:58] yeah actually next episode will be setting up landing gear there you go so and with retractable gear i'll just mention that there's different types of retractable gear there's pneumatic which is air operated there's mechanical retracts that are operated with a servo and then there's electric ones also that basically are just like the name implies they're powered by electricity which is kind of like a servo retract that's the same thing it's just built kind of like a servo retract.
[10:25] It's the same thing. It's just built in. The servo is built into the gear. The biggest difference is that it just plugs into a receiver and you're done. Yeah, it's a lot easier. There's not a whole lot of setup to those, which is nice. But yeah, we'll talk about that in the next episode. But so there's the three different types you can have. So you've got the gear and then you've got wheels, you can have skids, floats, skis. I mean, the types, different
[10:55] types of landing gear are, like I said, you do a Google search, you'll see what I'm talking about. There's lots of different ways to make your airplane safely contact the ground now when it comes i've never flown off of a lake or anything before on skis is it different than flying a regular airplane off of a runway well yeah let's say skis off of a like frozen surface or snow or wet grass sometimes you can fly with skis off of wet grass.
[11:27] The skis add a lot of drag. And if they're not set up correctly, if they kind of point down when you take off out into the airstream, they add a lot of drag. And it usually requires a lot of trim and things like that. But as far as taking off and landing, it's kind of the same, just a little more drag. Now floats, on the other hand landing it's kind of the same just a little more drag now floats on
[11:46] the other hand it's a completely different animal that's gonna say so since you answered that question i realized i said the wrong thing and i meant to say floats i have fun with skis before oh okay but never with floats so let's try this again floats i've never flown with floats before off of a lake yeah is it different different? It is. And how so? Generally speaking, your takeoff run ends up being a lot longer.
[12:11] You need, it takes a little bit more power to move those floats through the water, even though they have tricks designed into them to help break the surface tension of the water so that they get on plane, which is the float actually riding on top of the water as opposed to in the water. We actually talked about that before. I was asking about the floats that you have sitting in front of me, and it's got that little cutout thing. If you're on YouTube, you can see. It's called a step.
[12:41] Yeah, and I asked what that was for for and that's what you told me so yeah yeah designed yeah designed to break the surface tension to get the get the thing up on top of the water where there's less friction less float actually touching the water so gives you a little least amount of friction but yeah with flying with floats you've got a lot of cross-section area out there so requires a little bit more power maybe than flying the same
[13:06] airplane with landing gear. if you're accustomed to flying around your cub at half throttle, you may have to adjust that, to three-quarter throttle or so at the same speed with floats because they do add a lot of drag. But the takeoff is usually pretty much a non-event they go usually they're actually quite difficult to steer actually once they're up on step i mean this one has
[13:37] rudders actually built into the back of each float the screen here but yeah yeah to to facilitate movement and that those work okay they pretty, they have a lot of authority at slow speeds. But once these things get up on step, there's a lot of pressure on those things. So it takes a lot of servo to move those things in the water at those kinds of speeds. So it's actually, they actually want to go in a straight line, which is great for takeoffs
[14:00] and landings because you don't, you don't want to veer left or right on your takeoff. So that actually kind of, in a sense, makes it easier to fly off of water with the floats because they do just want to go straight ahead. That and the runway is a lot bigger. Well, depending on the size of your lake or pond. I guess that's true. Usually it's going to be a lot wider than a normal runway that you'll take off at, like at a field or something. Right.
[14:23] The things I've found, though, when I've flown with floats is that usually you're going to be flying off of a lake or a pond or something like that, which are usually surrounded by trees. So sometimes, even though you have this nice long runway, you may have trees at either end of it that could potentially impact your approach angle and your takeoff and all that. So trade-offs, I guess. But flying off of water is a lot of fun. I bet it would be. Yeah. And how about landing?
[14:53] What's that like? The landing, you pretty much set up exactly like you would with gear. Maybe you don't have to flare as much because the floats will absorb a lot of that impact. But, yeah, the approach and the technique is pretty much the same. And then do you slow down quite a bit faster then? Yeah, it slows down very fast. Does it? Yeah. I kind of wondered about that because as you get down into the water, it's like a break of its own. Yeah, it's kind of like, I kind
[15:20] of liken it to flying out of heavy grass, except you don't have the nose overs as much because you have a lot of float ahead of the cg so it's like the drag of heavy grass yeah not as much elevator like up elevators as soon as you get down on the ground yep exactly well it does seem like it'd be easier it is it's a lot of fun like i said usually usually if you're flying off the water, then you're hopefully doing other things around the water too, like maybe swimming and stuff like
[15:49] that. So it makes for a good time. Now, the ones that are in front of me are pretty big. What size airplane would that go on? So those are off of my old Goldberg anniversary edition. I think it was called Cub. And I think that measures 74 inches, I think, on the wing. Oh, that's a lot smaller than I would have expected for something this size. These are huge. Yeah, I think these floats will probably accommodate up to probably 80 inches or so, probably.
[16:12] But anything heavier than that, there's going to be so much float in the water, you'll have a hard time getting them up on step. Interesting. Yeah. That's kind of cool. Yep. All right, what else you got? Yeah. That's kind of cool. Yep. All right, what else you got? So, yeah, so that pretty much covers most of the types of landing gear that you'll find on our RC planes. They can be made of lots of different materials.
[16:39] I mean, wire, you see a lot of wire landing gear here on the table. That's because it's fairly inexpensive and fairly easy to make. You can bend a piece of, music wire, piano wire. Thank you. Lots of different shapes to make, different types of landing gear. So that's probably the most versatile. And it's usually held in place to the fuselage or the wing.
[17:08] There's usually a slot or a keyway maybe built into your fuselage to allow the wire to sort of sit into that and then it's held in place with straps usually. So it's a pretty simple arrangement, pretty easy to fabricate if you're building from scratch, pretty easy to make wire landing gear and make that work for you. The nice thing too, if it, if it actually goes into the
[17:22] bottom of the fuselage, that really like, you, like how it kind of goes up and has the hole that it goes up into, that really makes it hard to bend when you land or hard to rip your landing gear out. Oh, yeah. That's one of the things I've noticed. If you land harder with that kind of gear, it's very forgiving. Yeah. Whereas a regular, like, bent aluminum-type gear, that'll tear out a little easier. Yeah, it can be. Not that I've ever done that. I have. I've torn out one here before.
[17:52] And, yeah, I don't think I've ever torn out a landing gear block using wire gear. So, usually they're built pretty stout. If you're building a kit that had wire gear, you'll usually notice that there's a hardwood block formed with a channel in it that gets glued onto the inside, like you said, that the wire will then key into once it goes into the fuselage. It's very, very, very strong.
[18:16] And then, yeah, there is some flexibility in the wire, so it does absorb a lot of impact for those rougher, for those less than perfect landings we'll just call it that the ones that aren't greased in so well exactly so yeah that's a wire you can like this big one here like you're off your yak it could be made out of aluminum which in the case of your yak is one piece just one big giant piece giant piece piece of aluminum that's bent in the shape of a landing gear.
[18:45] Was that like five sixteenths of an inch thick? It's, yeah, it's that much or more. It's pretty big. Yeah, it's pretty thick. Well, it's got to hold up to a lot of weight. It does. But I mean, it's relatively simple. I mean, it's just a flat piece of aluminum plate that has been trimmed and then bent to shape. So if it, I mean, it works on big airplanes, it works on little airplanes. You've got some small aluminum gear up here at the front
[19:11] of the table. Pretty easy to make, fairly inexpensive. You can buy them preformed. You can also form your own if you're handy. You can, and it can be bent with relatively simple tools, just like wire. You can bend wire with pretty simple tools too, or you can buy tools made for the purpose. But usually a vise and a pair of pliers, and you've got handy bending tools for your aircraft landing gear. Yeah. Yeah.
[19:39] So aluminum gear can be one-piece or it can be two-piece or multi-piece, like this old pair off to the side here. You probably can't see it in the screen, but two-piece landing gear, basically two legs that bolt to the bottom of the airplane. That's a common setup for a lot of ARFs are built that way. So, yeah, aluminum, that's another type of material you can use. Fiberglass, I've seen fiberglass landing gear. Dubrow used to make one piece.
[20:07] They look very similar to the shape of your aluminum gear here, but just made out of fiberglass. So it's a little bit lighter than aluminum, a little bit more flexible than aluminum. Yeah, I would say. I would think it would give a little bit more. Yeah, still capable of tearing out your gear blocks, though, because it's not wire. It's not embedded in that nice hardwood block inside the fuselage or the wing yeah but yeah fiberglass you can there's
[20:30] plastic gear out there in the case of a lot of small foamies and edf or not edf but small balls of wood airplanes sometimes they'll have plastic gear that is fine for the task i've seen landing gear made out of wood, actual struts made out of wood. Oh, yeah, I guess I have too. But yeah, mostly when you think of landing gear, you don't think of floats. But yeah, these floats here, they're made out of wood. So that's another type of material you could use.
[20:58] Oh, these are wood? Yeah. I don't know. I just assumed they were fiberglass. Nope, they're wood. Interesting. Built them myself many years ago. Oh, you did? Many years ago, years ago yeah oh that's kind of cool yeah so is it balsa then balsa and light ply yep yeah if you look across the top i didn't take a lot of care in sanding you can see the wood grain oh but yeah and then the most the coolest material
[21:22] you can use to to get your gears carbon fiber, which is also the most expensive. Yeah, there's no doing that on your own. I mean, carbon fiber is… There's some folks that can do that. It's certainly outside my skill set to lay out my own carbon fiber gear. Well, I guess what I'm saying is you can't buy like a strip of carbon fiber and bend it into your own. Exactly. Yeah, you can laminate it if what you're doing and all that, but that's a lot of work.
[21:49] Yeah, but in its use, it's done kind of very similar to how an aluminum plate landing gear would be done. It simply bolts to the airframe. The carbon fiber is very light, but it's also very rigid it doesn't flex much and if it does flex much it usually delaminates which then renders renders the gear useless so be careful cheap cheap carbon gear might want to might want to stay away from that depends on what
[22:20] you're putting it on right yeah if it's important to you don't do it right and I and I gotta say I've probably seen more landing gear blocks torn out of fuselages with carbon gear than I have with any other type probably because it doesn't give the carbon gear is very very stiff and doesn't flex at all so probably why I've seen I've seen well let me put it this way I've repaired more landing gear block
[22:47] failures with carbon gear than I have any other so that makes sense take that for what it's worth yeah something's got to break and if it's not going to be the gear it's going to be what the gear attaches to exactly yeah so basically the landing gear components they're they're pretty simple I mean you've got, you've got basically the landing gear strut, or like in the case of your aluminum gear here, the aluminum piece would be considered
[23:11] the strut. And then there's an axle. So the strut is what connects the airplane to the wheel? Well, the strut is what connects your whole landing gear system to the airplane, to the airframe. So like if you think of the strut, it has the wheels and the axles and all that stuff mounted to it, and then that all gets mounted to the airframe, and that piece that mounts it to the airframe is technically a strut. But yeah, you've got your
[23:36] strut, and then you've got your axle, and then you've got your wheel or ski or whatever you have hanging off of your axle, and then fittings for attaching wheel pants if you have them or any necessary fairings if your airplane is so equipped. And that is basically a landing gear system in a simplified explanation. But yeah, the axles usually are bolted to the strut, or if you're using wire gear, the axle is usually formed as part of the strut.
[24:19] And then your wheel slips onto your axle and is held in place either by a wheel collar or some other cool device used for keeping your wheel on the axle. And that's pretty much it. Yeah, which could be about anything, really. I've seen rubber bands even. Oh, yeah. On small ones, just the rubber band that's held on with it. Yeah, anything that'll keep the wheel on the axle. Washers. Yeah, washers, solder to the end. O-rings. Yeah, O-rings, I've seen that before. Yeah. Yeah.
[24:36] So yeah, that pretty much covers the landing gear system and componentry that is part of that system. Okay. I touched on retractable landing gear and kind of mentioned the types. I'll just go over that real quickly since we'll do a little bit deeper dive on the next episode on setting it up. But basically there's three basic types of retractable landing gear. And there is mechanical, which basically is operated by a servo with pushrods, just like a control surface.
[25:06] And then you have pneumatic, which is actually air operated from an onboard pressurized tank on the airframe. And then you have electric, which are operated by an electric motor that is internal to the retract unit that drives the gear mechanism. That's usually a worm gear, right? Like that kind of setup. So I mean, technically it's not really exactly like a servo. Yeah. The motor works a little bit differently, but yeah. So when did each one come out? Do you remember?
[25:39] Like what was out when you started? Well, so when I got started inc mechanical and pneumatic were already were already well established so okay i witnessed if you will the evolution of electric which actually goes back quite a ways honestly i believe and i don't quote me on this but i think craft electronics had a set of electric electric retracts back in the late 70s,
[26:08] which is quite remarkable considering how there was like a really long void where there were no electric retracts. And now, with the advent of fairly inexpensive electronics from overseas, they've come back. Well, and everything's been miniaturized too. Smaller motors, smaller, more powerful motors, I guess. Yeah, technology. Yeah. So I guess we're kind of calling maybe the electric retracts nowadays
[26:36] as like going through a second renaissance or maybe a second coming or whatever. But yeah, they're different. Like you said, the electric retracts today are usually a worm gear driven by an electric motor. The electric retracts of old were basically a servo embedded into the gear unit that operated a cams putting the servo actually in the retract. But yeah, they were electric, considered electric retracts, even though technically they were more like a mechanical.
[27:13] Yeah, but they were ran by electricity as opposed to pneumatic, so that's probably why they were called that. So now you chose to use pneumatic. I did. On your dualist. Now, you chose to use pneumatic. I did. On the dualist. Why did you go with that as opposed to the simpler electric? So, for me, it was a nostalgia. It was because my original dualist, if you remember the premise of the dualist project, it was to kind of build another dualist out of the ashes of the old one
[27:45] that I crashed way back in the 90s. Yeah. And I still had the one surviving retract unit from that dualist, and it was pneumatic. So that's why. That was the reason. Yeah. Okay. But generally speaking, I don't shy away from projects that might be solved in easier fashion in some other way. So I'll use mechanical retracts even if the opportunity presents itself. But yeah, the reason I chose it for the duels was really more out of nostalgia than anything. It seems overly complicated.
[28:25] I mean, I'll just leave it at that. For what you're doing with it, it just seems overly complicated for something that size. Now, I understand if I'm correct, like when you get to some of these bigger airplanes, pneumatics is really the only way to go. Yes, no? Yeah, I would agree. yes no yeah i i would agree you you can you can swing a heavier gear with air than you can right now anyway with electric motors well i'm sure that's going to change eventually yeah
[28:55] like it's already starting to go that direction like i can see a lot of big retract units out there for larger like scale warbirds and things like that that are electric they're crazy expensive but they're out there yeah but yeah air can it's a big muscle you can move a lot of weight with an with an air operated cylinder and for a while that you'll probably see see that being the norm until until the electric motors get to the point where they
[29:25] can miniaturize them to the point where they can still produce the power they need and and not consume the power they need to if that makes sense yeah whereas the automatic system is just air you just pump it up with a with a pump either by hand or an electric pump or whatever and it's a completely separate system so you're not pulling more power through it. You're not pulling amps that you might need somewhere else or you might overload your board with.
[29:49] So I can see that for a bigger airplane. Although some electric setups are using dedicated batteries now for them too. I've seen a couple of those setups online. I haven't built one myself, but I've seen a couple of the larger setups that actually have a dedicated power source just for the retracts so not not so different than a than an air setup really because an air tank is a separate power source for the for the gear so yeah but yeah i i can
[30:19] understand you the the pneumatic system it it can be complicated, especially on smaller airplanes, where an electric gear would certainly make the installation so much easier and simpler. you're only running wires, you're not running airlines and valves and all this other kind of stuff, fill valves and tanks. But for me, it was, you was a it was a nostalgia and i kind
[30:47] of like the challenge of setting up an unconventional gear setup which that one certainly is true so let's move on to wheels and tires what are the different kinds of wheels you can get oh geez, geez. Right? I mean, a ton of them. Yeah. I mean, I don't even know where to begin. Foam, wood, rubber, plastic, you name it, it's probably been made into a wheel at some point. Cardboard. Cardboard. Yeah. Well, that was easy. Yeah.
[31:21] I mean, you can make your wheels out of anything. There's lots of ready-to-purchase wheels out there on the market that suit a wide, wide variety of applications. But, if money's tight, hey, grab your Dremel and carve up a piece of Balsa. You can make some nice wheels out of Balsa. Oh, yeah, you could. Never thought about that. You can spend a lot of money on wheels, too.
[31:44] Oh, you could. Never thought about that. You can spend a lot of money on wheels, too. Oh, you can. Have you noticed some of these aluminum-hubbed wheels with true inflated rubber tires for some of these big turbine models that are out there with brakes even? Yeah. Incredibly expensive. Not only that, but the bicycle-looking type wheels for some of these older airplanes. Those are cool, though.
[32:03] They are very awesome. But man, they are pricey oh yeah I mean uncomfortably high prices for a tiny tiny factor is high when you click the buy now button yeah it's like oh did I just make a mistake yeah but they look so nice especially like on the eindecker yeah that you're gonna build someday yeah one of these days or the elder rather well older right it's an elder 40 plan but yeah things have moved around a little bit i don't know
[32:29] exactly what's going on which is why we're going to take a little bit of a vacation so we can get to some of those projects yeah yeah i do i like those wire wire wheels those look really really good i should get a set of those for my camel whenever that time comes that i finish it i don't think we have to worry about that anytime soon you got a tri-motor to build first that's true okay see what kind of wheels
[32:50] are on that definitely not basic wheels good perfect yeah but big they are like five or six inches yes we need to measure that because i don't know how big they're going to be they're going to be humongous and something else that's fun to do with wheels is wheel pants oh my gosh yeah i like wheel pants i like i love the look of them yeah i do too do they actually serve a purpose actually for full-size airplanes they would absolutely but absolutely for rc do they
[33:19] i mean let's be honest i mean other than other than to dress up your landing gear i mean no but they look so good they do they really do they really do like i prefer wheel pants on about anything i can think of yeah except for cubs i love huge well i mean i know they don't have them but except for cubs i love just just seeing a huge, huge wheel. Like, the bigger the better. I think I had five-inch wheels on my 80-inch cub. That's crazy. That's awesome.
[33:54] I mean, on your Tundra plane, I guess. And that's what I like about the cub. It looks cool like that. They're just ugly. They make your airplane look like a toy. They're so out of proportion when you get them that big. A cool toy. Yeah look like a toy that's like so out of proportion when you get them that big a cool toy yeah a cool toy that's ugly no it's not you take that back certain planes lend themselves well to that type of wheel yes and the cub is one of them but most
[34:22] do not i'm just gonna leave it at that I would agree with that okay good like I wouldn't put six inch wheels on the duelist well that would just look silly I and I agree and how would you retract those into the wing well I don't have retractable gear now do I exactly I don't know and you just put a bigger hole in the wing but a bigger hole in the wing it would have to go through the wing probably because they're wider too I'm not sure
[34:44] the wing would be thick enough to accommodate such a wheel so the wheel would go out on top of the wing anyway that would be really ugly then actually i might be getting no i know what's next so yeah i will wheel pants get back to wheel pants i will go through the trouble of mounting them just because i really really like how they look they to me they finish what i mean they finish an area especially
[35:10] a tail dragger yeah they just give it that nice finished look what i mean they almost i mean like i know certain certain tricycle gear airplanes have them but they almost look comedic yeah they almost look comical on a tricycle gear. They don't look right. I agree. But sometimes they can be a challenge to mount. And we'll leave it at that. You had a little bit of a challenge mounting yours on the Dualist.
[35:43] I did. And then it was kind of unfortunate because the only way I could figure out how to do it was to actually steal axles off of another airplane that I had sitting back in storage. Let's just say that way. So I stole the axles off of that. That was a weird… He's talking about an airplane that came out of the waterlogged airplane transportation device. No, I'm not. No, this is that black biplane. Oh, yeah. It is in storage. Oh, there we go. -huh.
[36:16] Gosh, he will take any chance whatsoever. Any chance whatsoever to make fun of me for a leaky trailer even when it's not true anyway so i stole the the wheel axles off of that it was a weird two-piece type axle and i loved it like it worked great and i asked tom where to get him he's like i've never seen that before i don't know where you can get them so i mean that's how you talk by the way dude so perfect impression i have no clue.
[36:45] Like, I'm going to have to reach out to somebody else and try and figure out what they are. Because those were so much easier to use. Yeah, maybe we'll post a picture of them. I mean, I've seen axles like that before in, like, some ARFs. But, like, as far as seeing something like that for sale, like, from Dubro or something like that at a hobby shop, I've never actually seen an axle like that for sale. It's weird because, well, I mean, it's just a threaded axle that has…
[37:09] It's almost like a wheel collet. Like it's just a big wheel collet that's threaded. Exactly, yeah. And then your axle goes through it. Kind of a neat idea. It is. You use the set screws to hold it in place. The only thing I don't like about it is how much axle actually protrudes on the inside of the gear. That's the only thing I don't like about that. Oh much axle actually protrudes on the inside of the gear. That's the only thing I don't like about that. Oh, you can cut that down.
[37:27] I just didn't have a chance to. Ah, okay. Because it really doesn't need to be any farther than like a… The jam nut that's on there? Yeah, pretty much. Well, a little bit farther than that, actually. Well, then it wouldn't look any different than these. Well, it would stick out a little bit more because you have to have the collar on there, yeah. But other than that, it doesn't have to be much farther.
[37:44] I just didn't trim the other ones because I ran out of time. And then I forgot about it, so. Well, it flies fine. Yeah, it flies great. 94 mile an hour, was it? I don't even remember anymore. Slower than yours, I know. Mine was faster, that's all I remember. For now. Anything else you want to talk about? But anyway wheel pants take the take the time to mount them because they they really set your airplane off and make it give it that finished
[38:10] look but yeah that's really kind of all i wanted to talk about but be careful more of a with the wheel pants because they also break easier they can if you don't have them mounted right and if you don't have a mounted ride either by the way they will spin around and make it a lot harder to land i actually have not done that no you haven't but i mounted ride either, by the way, they will spin around and make it a lot harder to land. I actually have not done that. No, you haven't.
[38:28] But I have seen people that have. And it's comical. It is comical. I mean, we've seen it a few times at our field. somebody will fly by in the wheel pan just doing the old spin-a-roo there on the landing gear, which is kind of amusing. Yeah, yeah. But I don't want that to ever happen to me. No.
[38:45] Okay. which is kind of kind of amusing yeah yeah but i don't want that to ever happen to me no okay so that's as deep as i really wanted to get into landing you're just more of a familiarization kind of and then the next episode we'll i'm gonna talk about setting up your retractable landing gear and some other tips i'll share all right well then tune in next week and please that's it and hey I'll hit you guys up again. Please fill out the survey if you haven't already.
[39:08] Like I said, help us help you. We're running out of ideas here, so if you want to hear us talk about stuff, we get those ideas straight from you guys in those surveys. So please. Fill them out. Take the two, five minutes, whatever it is. Yes, the two, five minutes. Or you could take ten minutes. The two to five minutes to fill them out. Oh, I got you. And that would help us Yes, the two five minutes. The two to five minutes. Oh, I gotcha. And that would help us out, which helps you guys.
[39:29] All right. Thank you, everybody. Until next time, I'm Ron. I'm Tom. See you later. Good night. Good night. Good night. Good night. សូវាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!