Mark Jones wrote: >what are your brackets made from and how are they holding up?
I'm not sure if you're talking about nose wheel (which I don't have) or main gear, but mine are 6061-T6 and I've never had a problem with them. Mine are shown near the bottom of http://www.n56ml.com/kgear.html . The lower ones are about .060" thick and the upper ones are .125" thick. The secret to my upper ones is they were bent on a press to the proper radius by a guy that's been doing it for 40 years. I fished these pieces out of the recycle bin...some of his rejects for whatever reason. It was just pure luck that those happened to be bent to about the right angle. I'd ask him to make some more like it, but I'm not willing to jeopardize his job or mine as management has tightened up significantly on "outside work" in view of the tightening bottom line. Generally speaking the minimum bend radius for 6061-T6 this thick is in the neighborhood of 1.5 to 2x the thickness of the material, but the bigger the better, to some extent. I'm sure somebody in a sheet metal shape near you can bend some up at just the right angle. Or you can do it yourself (maybe not quite as perfect) by bending your own aluminum over a piece of oak or other hardwood that's been radiused with a router. That's a technique Bengelis describes in his books, and it ought to work fine for material this thin. As for welding 6061-T6, once it's broken, it'll almost always break there again, since it's substantially weaker afterwards. Another option, although heavier, is to make them out of steel. At least it can be thinner and with a tighter radius, and it probably won't fatigue and break like the 6061-T6 will. Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com website www.n56ml.com
