After David Stanbridge confirmed the factory would not be supporting the
taildragger
(TD) conversion we instigated our own version of the main gear legs. I
approached Harmon Lange about 18-24 months ago to make these.
Bearing in mind Europa originally paid $90 for them 20+ years ago, I was hoping
that a batch purchase would be possible at a good price.
That wasn't the case, so we set about having our own legs made. This
necessitated
some tooling and the need to bend and heat treat the legs. Even material
sourcing in the UK was difficult.
The simple fact is that the cost is huge unless a significant number are ordered
and paid for up front.
To alleviate the major issues in manufacture and to enable some adjustability of
toe-in/out and camber, we have redesigned the axle part of the leg completely.
This makes them cheaper to produce, adjustable and also provides a means of
reliably jacking the aircraft.
The new gear legs are stressed and the compliance data supports the Issue 2 of
Mod 11369 (Taildragger conversion), that will become a series or standard Mod.
The new gear legs will also fit trigear - thus making a replacement possible if
people find their originals are distorted or have unwanted ground handling
traits
- due to minor misalignments during installation.
The TD installation instructions are being updated now, there are several
in-build
in the UK, EU and the USA. These builds currently use existing trigear legs
for the TD mains.
We will be advertising complete kits for the TD conversion soon, as an alternate
to the license and instructions only product available now.
This entire process started back in 2002, the Mod being approved in 2005 and
G-MLXP
being PtF airworthy since 2011. 2022 will see around 5 build/conversions
with a projected 10-15 in 2023.
We are now also offering a turn-key installation service, with an aircraft
currently
in the bay as we speak.
--------
John Wighton
Europa XS trigear G-IPOD
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http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.php?p=507170#507170
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