"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 24 Aug 2005 09:00:29 -0400, " jls" wrote:


"Scott" wrote in message
...
I think it's the other way around...what can a Maule do that a Scott
3200 can't do? SHIMMEY! Years ago we put a Maule pneumatic on our
Cessna 140 to replace the hard rubber tire Scott 2000. Never could get
the Maule to work well, so we went back to the Scott. The other thing
that is nice on the 3200 is dual forks. That just HAS to be better
than
a single fork in rough field operations...

Scott, I have seen those Scott forks bend, warp, crack, break and be
re-welded. Knock on wood, but I have never seen that big brawny fork on
a
Maule crack or break. I have never had a Maule shimmy on my aircraft,
but
have fixed a Cub's Maule that shimmied because the tailsprings had been
improperly installed and the wheel was mis-rigged.

One of the Fly Baby crowd put together a paper on the care and feeding of
Maule
tailwheels:

http://www.bowersflybaby.com/tech/Maule_Tailwheel.pdf

He recommends dissimilar springs to discourage shimmy, and says that
binding or
looseness in the assembly itself encourages it.

Myself, I haven't had a problem.

Ron Wanttaja

Excellent site, Ron. Just what you need --- the vertical shaft tilted 15
to 20 deg. forward, compression (not tension) springs with asymmetrical
recoils, the assembly rigged true at the leaf springs so there's no lateral
tilt of the wheel, and no slop in the leaf springs or chains. If there's no
slop in the wheel assembly you won't get any shimmy.

In 20 years I never had a shimmy. Last time I was at Clemson I watched a
Skybolt land on the paved runway. He should have landed in the grass. The
aircraft had a Scott 3200 on it. The shimmy was so violent it was awesome.

But then he probably just had a rigging problem.