Carlson Skunk Works

Greetings on the Ides of March! I hope everyone had a great Pi day yesterday. Someone did bring in pie for us at work yesterday and I managed to resist until the last part of the day.

So, on to an update on the progress on Sawdust.

The shock struts are now complete. Therefore, pictures are in order, and here they are:

The shock strut at the top shows all the parts. Then just below it is the fully assembled shock strut. At this point they are interchangeable from one side to the other. The springs were given to me by Cal with the caviot that I could not give them back to him. They were originally for his Pober Jr Ace, but they turned out to be just a bit too springy for him. They are pretty stiff and I think they will be good for Sawdust.

At the right side of the picture is the cross brace that goes on the bottom of the fuselage. This piece provides a place for the shock struts to fasten to.

Toward the bottom of the picture is the front leg of the landing gear and below that is one of the axles.

This is a closer view of the disassembled shock strut. The spring goes over the outside tube (short one), then the long tube goes through the short tube and the collar fits over the short tube and a bolt goes through all of them. The short tube has a three inch slot in it to allow the bolt to slide. The result is that the spring is compressed when there is tension on the shock strut. It is sort of hard to explain, but it works very nicely.

Here is a close up of how the axle will fit to the landing gear leg. You can see the welding that I did myself! I know it is not real pretty, but I am sure it will hold. The plate on the end of the leg was tacked in place by me, then Fred used his TIG welder to do the final weld. The plate is 0.25″ thick and the tube that it is welded to is 1.25″ diameter with a .125″ wall thickness, so these parts are pretty hefty.

The axle is bolted to the plate on the landing gear leg using four AN4 bolts. AN4 translates into 1/4″ diameter.

The wheels and tires came a while back, but are still waiting for the landing gear to be finished. The hubs are 6″ diameter and the tires are 6.00 x 8 which works out to an overall diameter of about 22″. The tires say not to inflate to more than 20 psi. That makes them fairly soft compared to car tires, but that should add a bit of cussion for rough landings.

This is the back side of the wheel assembly. You can see the disk caliper and rotor facing up. There are a couple of zip ties holding things together. That is the way they came from Matco. I cut the ties on the other wheel to get the axle out so I could mark the holes.

I need to finish welding up the landing gear, then move on to the rudder pedals, the control stick and engine mount. Material for the controls and engine mount is suppose to arrive today.