Texas Parasol

On Aug 18, 4:11*pm, cavelamb himself wrote:
Bob Kuykendall wrote:
On Aug 17, 5:27 pm, Fred the Red Shirt

...Here is where it gets interesting. *The lower longerons
are curved. That means if those holes are drilled the
same for the front and back longeron the axes about
which those legs pivot will not be colinear, nor even
parallel...

Non-Euclidean geometry aside, that seems to me to be a rather sub-
optimal design approach. Nothing that a couple of rod ends or rubber
bushings couldn't fix. But it would probably be lighter and more
effective to just make the gear leg holes colinear, and then build,
adjust, or drill the fuselage to maintain that colinearity.

You can't do that without changing the dimensions or the shape of
the fuselage, which means you would not be building the fuselage
per the plans.

For instance, you could make the lower longeron straight between
the two carry-throughs. But the plans call for it to be curved. You
could put a wedge-shaped shim between either the forward or the
read carry-through and the lower longeron, but none is called for
in the plans.

You could use angle with a wider leg on one side so as to be able
to skew the bolt, but the size called out in the plans is not wide
enough.

If built according to the plans, the gear legs do not pivot freely.
Just what bends, and how much when they do flex I do not
know. It would be interesting if someone who has one under
construction were to try to measure that while the fuselage is
conveniently inverted.



Which is the way it is done...


I haven't seen ANY done that way.

In every photo I have seen of the TP undercarriage not one
shows the pivot bolts co-linear. In every case the bolt axes
were parallel to the lower longeron, and therefor skewed
with respect to each other.

--

FF