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Permalink Reply by Chris Beebe on December 17, 2016 at 9:36am

Nice video!

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Permalink Reply by Don Honabach on December 19, 2016 at 11:48am

Thanks Chris :-)

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Permalink Reply by christopher fryatt on March 26, 2017 at 9:05am

don reading about your final bungee setting today, do you still have as much "bounce" going on?

I have my steel bungee set hard since ive only got 6 1/2 " prop clearance , afraid to loose er up. I have difficulty with rudder in flight as you've described

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Permalink Reply by Don Honabach on March 26, 2017 at 4:38pm

Christopher,

This is off memory, so ... :-)

The steel bungee has two different settings.

The first/primary one is set using the two outside threaded rods and controls how stiff the gear in general.

The second one is the middle rod which controls how much spring tension is applied when the nose wheel is off the ground (i.e. flying). 

The big mistake I made was not fully understanding / properly adjusting the tension for the second one. This resulted in way too much force on the bottom gear support plate when the wheel was off the ground. Ultimately, it resulted in a rudder/wheel that was extremely difficult to turn while flying. At first, scarily so. On my first test flight, I'm really glad there wasn't any major cross wind that would require a lot of dancing on the pedals, etc.

Jan should have instructions on setting the tension properly for when the wheel is off the ground. The bad news is you'll have to jack up the plane or similar to make the adjustment. Once you have the wheel off the ground though, it's a piece of cake. It does help to have a second person. This way you can adjust the middle rod/bolt while they turn wheel by hand. Essentially, if someone can grab the front wheel while it's off the ground and turn it easily, then your set. Until then, you adjust the middle bolt. 

FYI - On the middle rod, you'll move the bolt downwards on the threaded rod to loosen the tension that the bottom gear plate sees when the wheel is off the ground. You may find that you run out of thread before you get the tension where you want it. In that case, you'll need to add some washers/spacers on the middle threaded rod.

After you are done. Keep an eye on the spring feel/tension and make sure the stiffness is where you want it with the wheel on the ground. I believe (and this is from memory) that by decreasing the tension so the wheel/rudder turn freely in flight will slightly increase the tension/stiffness overall. Which in your case might not be a bad thing but just something to consider.

Don

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