I purchased my gear legs from Diehl 20+ years ago and they had one straight edge the entire length of the leg. They look to be the same as NVaero is selling now. Unless Dan changed the design before I hooked up with the KR community some 28 years ago I have no idea about the set from the donor KR. I'm wondering if the builder of that KR modified them, not that any of us builders today would do such a thing. I'm thinking Steve is selling the gear legs in the same shape that he got from Dan. I seem to recall Dan did a drop test on the legs for early testing and Marty Roberts was involved in the early design / testing of the gear. Someone mentioned the cast brackets are quite strong. The brackets I questioned earlier and were changed by Dan were the lower cast aluminum brackets that the axles bolted to. They were rather narrow and had bolt holes to close to the edge in my opinion. There were a couple of failures and Dan recalled them all and replaced them with 1/4" 4130 steel. That has to be more that 15 years ago as I've been flying mine since early 2004.
Larry Flesner ------------------------------- Not that it's important by any stretch of the imagination, but the lower cast aluminum brackets had been recalled before I acquired my KR as a project 23 years ago. They had already been swapped out when I picked up the project. Time does get away from us old timers... I would guess that if anyone wanted to pin point a date (I don't), it would be in the old newsletters from around 1993 - 1995. Dan was not a fan of the longer gear legs he sold to Larry and me. When he first saw my plane, he tried to talk me into cutting a few inches off the gear. I declined. His comment was, "Then make good landings!" I've been beating this plane on the ground for 1200 hours now, and so far, the gear is still hanging on. I did find an issue using the 5:00x5 tires with some of the tacky tires that don't skid much on touchdown (Good Year Flight Custom III) as they were actually twisting the spars a bit on touch down and causing some cracks in the skin around the gear mounts. At that time, my flights were all from a high altitude airport, which means a significantly higher landing speed. Between the faster landings, more inertia to spin up a 5:00x5 tire, the tackiness of the flight Custom III tires, and 6 more inches of leverage with the longer gear legs, I could feel a noticeable jerk on the gear upon touch down. I took those tires off and went back to the cheap Condor tires, which ended the problem. -Jeff Scott _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/. Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html. see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@list.krnet.org
