DG 505 tail wheel hub failure?

Has anyone had a DG 505 tail wheel hub (plastic) blow
out? If so what do you think the cause was? Just one
side of the hub lost a fifth of the rim. The debate
seems to be side load in ground handling vs tail first
landing. The tube did not pop and there are no scars
on the other half. Any tips would be great!

Alfonso Ossorio wrote:
Has anyone had a DG 505 tail wheel hub (plastic) blow
out? If so what do you think the cause was? Just one
side of the hub lost a fifth of the rim. The debate
seems to be side load in ground handling vs tail first
landing. The tube did not pop and there are no scars
on the other half. Any tips would be great!

I had a similar failure on a tailwheel of a Ventus B last year. Not
sure exactly what happened but I think it was the difference between
landing on a grass strip and landing on a paved runway. In that glider
I usually tried to touch the tailwheel first and perhaps it touched
harder than it should have. There was no other damage. To repair, it
was simply a matter of ordering another wheel from wings and wheels and
replacing it.

We had the same thing happen to our LS-4.. pilot attempting to land brick
one, standard practice with 500ft of gravel leading up to pavement.. problem
was there was a lip at the pavement and with the low energy approach he had
the tail wheel down and it clipped the lip rolling up onto pavement...
nothing really noticeable until the next preflight, when upon checking tail
tire pressure, the plastic wheel came apart. Granted the wheel was probably
at least 10 yrs old if not the original, so it was brittle with age being
stored in the desert.. in and out of the trailer.

So my guess would be if you are landing on grass, maybe you caught a stone
sticking up?
Or someone did a very hard tail first landing.

So now we tell out pilots not to aim for brick one.. save the tail wheel..

BT

"Alfonso Ossorio" wrote in message
...
Has anyone had a DG 505 tail wheel hub (plastic) blow
out? If so what do you think the cause was? Just one
side of the hub lost a fifth of the rim. The debate
seems to be side load in ground handling vs tail first
landing. The tube did not pop and there are no scars
on the other half. Any tips would be great!

On 15 Mar 2005 13:54:27 GMT, Alfonso Ossorio
wrote:

Has anyone had a DG 505 tail wheel hub (plastic) blow
out? If so what do you think the cause was? Just one
side of the hub lost a fifth of the rim. The debate
seems to be side load in ground handling vs tail first
landing. The tube did not pop and there are no scars
on the other half. Any tips would be great!


I recommend the 9 lb. DG brass tailwheel. Strong, too

I had similiar issues with the tailwheel on my DG-400. The hub was
replaced once and the tubes many times. I finally switched to a solid
tire on an aluminum hub from A/C Spruce (cheap, too, $27):
http://www.aircraftspruce.com/catalo..._tailwheel.php
Note: experimental A/C only.

Tom