- Joined
- Feb 1, 2007
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My A&P/IA stopped by my hangar yesterday to look over my Acrosport II for a condition inspection. This was his first time seeing the airplane, and I told him to be picky, since he and I will be doing aerobatics in it. Anyway, he noticed that I had die springs in the landing gear, instead of bungees. Apparently, he had never seen that system up close before. He then went into a landing story on his homebuilt Cub, that is equipped with bungees. He had a student that did a hard landing, and the bungee on one side broke. Luckily, there was a failsafe that prevented the gear leg from flopping all the way out. He did have to take over the controls, and set the airplane down very gently, but it was really a non-issue. He was just wondering if there was a similar failsafe with the die spring gear. Its not going to keep him from signing off on the airplane, it was just a question.
So, I got to wondering the same thing. It looked to me likeyou would have to actually breakone of the tie rods that the springs are on before the gear leg could flop all the way out. If one of the springs did break, it looks like the gear leg would just deflect a little further. I don't really see the spring failing badly enough for it to leave the tie rod, but I could be wrong. Has anyone seen any die spring gear failures? What happened?
