Landing gear thoughts - retract or fixed?

[Rick Galati]

OK, I'm convinced. Fitting tubular main gear from a 172 would make things a whole lot simpler.......

Fitting tubular legs is a sound idea from a practical, economical and efficiency standpoint. Doing so, you should realize that it is very important to install gear leg fairings, wheel pants, and intersection fairings to those tubular legs. In fact, those components are so vital for drag reduction and increased top speed that Van's will tell you fitting those components to an RV will add at least 12 MPH or put another way....the equivalent of adding an additional 27 H.P.!



Here is an old fluid dynamics video. While the 6 minute video itself is dated, its valuable information is timeless and quite revealing. At the very least, you will come to understand the dramatic drag difference between air flowing over a simple round tube and air flowing over the same tube when aerodynamically faired:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftq8jTQ8ANE

[Mike Switzer]

that is a pretty good video

[spungey]

one hopefully minor issue to consider ... you will also get better insurance rates with fixed gear.

[Ron Blum]

that is a pretty good video

While you're out on YouTube, check out the #2 video of that series, too. Shapiro (the guy doing these experiments) is still used in aerodynamic classrooms today. I especially like the smooth vs. rough ball experiments. It says a lot about turbulent (rough ball) and laminar flow (smooth ball) with respect to positive (back side of ball) & negative (front side of ball) pressure gradients and a little thing called Reynolds Number (illustrated well in the drop tube experiments). These are GREAT videos, Rick! Thanks for sharing! -Ron

Oh, PS, as everyone else has mentioned, I'd go with the fixed gear, too ... unless you're planning to go up in the compressibility (Mach) flight levels.

[Mike Switzer]

Well, we took a little trip today to Kankakee & besides getting another 1.9 in the club's Arrow, I picked up these:

[Bill Barker]

1) I agree - Go light with the fixed gear.

2) I vote for steerable nosewheel. With a castoring nose wheel, if the brake fails on one side, you lose steering. Not a pleasant surprise on landing.

Bill

[corsair82pilot]

Can you get 200 mph with fixed gear?
Here is the gear I built from scratch for my project.

:

[Chad Jensen]

Can you get 200 mph with fixed gear?

Easily.

Here is the gear I built from scratch for my project.

:

That's really cool!!

[steveinindy]

As Chad says, 200 mph in a fixie isn't hard to do. You show me a 350+ knot fixed gear and you can color me impressed.

[David Darnell]

Well, not aware of many 350 kn homebuilts out there.... About the closest I can think of is/was Wittmans "Bonzo", if you consider a Golden Age Racer to be a homebuilt... Oh, and it had fixed gear..