In article ,
"Jarhead" wrote:

"DonMorrisey" wrote in message
oups.com...
| Howdy.
|
| I'm at the point in my project where I'm lining up the landing gear.
| Based on what I've found from various sources there seems to be many
| schools of thought asto whether the main gear on a taildragger should
| toe in or out and how much????
|
| Thought I'd throw it out here to see what the brain trust has to say
on
| this topic. Thanks. Don....
|

I know you have gotten responses supporting toe out on the main gear
which is just the opposite of what I was told by a Cessna A&P some years
ago.

His explanation, as I remember it, is that a slight amount of toe in is
desirable because as the aiplane started to groundloop, say to the left,
the left wheel would be more in line with forward motion and the right
wheel would be causing drag by the sideways scuffing action. Toe out
would reverse the above which would contribute to the loss of control.

Here is a 1948 Cessna service letter supporting toe in from the factory:
http://www.cessna120-140.org/Library..._Cessna_56.htm

As someone who's read quite a lot on (land) vehicle dynamics, I don't
see how that can hold water. Frankly, I don't think either is going to
make a whole lot of difference, but with toe-in, all you'll do is have
the outside wheel at an increase steering angle just as dynamic weight
transfer adds downward load onto it. That will give it more "bite" to
create even more force, etc, etc.

If I were to guess (and that's all this is: relatively educated
guessing) I'd have the wheels toe-out, so that as the weight is
transferred due to any initial deviation, it is transferred away from
the wheel running at the higher steering angle.

--
'It is Mac OS X, not BSD.' -- 'From Mac OS to BSD Unix.'
"It's BSD Unix with Apple's APIs and GUI on top of it' -- 'nothing but BSD Unix'
(Edwin on Mac OS X)
'[The IBM PC] could boot multiple OS, such as DOS, C/PM, GEM, etc.' --
'I claimed nothing about GEM other than it was available software for the
IBM PC. (Edwin on GEM)
'Solaris is just a marketing rename of Sun OS.' -- 'Sun OS is not included
on the timeline of Solaris because it's a different OS.' (Edwin on Sun)