Hi Remi,
I have had several outrigger legs fail. Some from bad landings. Others for no
good
reason. It is my belief that the Nylon-66 does not easily show any signs of
weakness or eminent failure. So you can't properly inspect preflight.
I know from talking to other mono pilots that plenty of failures have occurred
for no apparent reason.
I started using fiberglass rod, 5/8" diameter. I use a 6" piece of the nylon-66
with a 5/8" hole bored thru the center to fit the fiberglass rod into the
Outrigger
socket. I tapered the nylon from the bottom of the socket to the lower
end of the 6" nylon. I tested this on the bench and the rod has about the same
flex as the original setup, but when it fails, it is progressive and visible,
rather than shattering unpredictably.
I made new wheel forks out of steel to fit 4"inline skate wheels to the smaller
diameter legs. They seem no different in the way they perform from the original
shopping cart wheels, except they are urethane, have sealed bearings, and wear
quite well. Narrower, so probably less drag.
This setup has worked well for me and saved about 1.5lbs.
Kevin
On Aug 11, 2012, at 1:00 PM, "Remi Guerner" <air.guerner@orange.fr> wrote:
>
> Hi Monowheel drivers,
> I broke one outrigger leg two months ago and flew for a while with an
> emergency
repair designed on site just to allow me to go back home: the repair was made
using the existing remains of the nylon rod lengthened with scrap aluminum
tubing. When I finally received the nylon rods ordered from the Europa factory
I could not use them because they were slightly too short and badly machined.
So I ordered a length of 1"1/4 Nylon from ACS and installed them immediately.
At the first landing, one of the all new legs broke just at mid length. I was
very embarassed as this happened on a big airport were I had the honor of a
jumbo
eight wheeler fire truck! This time I managed to repair quickly as I was
carrying the old emergency repaired rod in the aircraft. I am now afraid of
flying
with the aircraft as it is, as an out rigger leg can break again at the next
landing.
> My questions:
> - How is that possible that a new nylon rod breaks at the very first landing
while the original parts have been able to withstand 12 years of aging, 950
flight
hours and probably one or two thousand landings, some of them not as smooth
as they should be?
> - How is that possible that the nylon rod broke right at mid length, which is
not where the maximum stress is located? Note that the first leg broke at the
upper end which seems logical to me.
> - What is the experience on other monowheels regarding the life of those nylon
rods?
> - has anyone designed and tested a variation of the original outriggers, with
rods made of other materials such as glass fiber, steel...?
> Regards
> Remi Guerner
> F-PGKL, grounded
>
>
>
>
> Read this topic online here:
>
> http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=380679#380679
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
|