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Hey guys, For what it is worth, "Fred", in his patent drawings, showed the main gear on straight struts (no trailing arms) and described them as a "surface engagement means" aft of the center of gravity. Along with these, he claimed a "castoring" nose wheel. (And, of course, our nose wheels DO castor.) In the specifications, he describes how his design makes the plane tend to castor or point in the direction of actual flight (not the heading) once the gear contacts to ground. It is interesting reading, for those who care to look it up. Patent number is 2,110,516. You can find it on USPTO.GOV. Dave Winters (a congenitally curious patent attorney) -----Original Message----- From: Ed Burkhead [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:06 PM To: Cflyin Subject: RE: [COUPERS-FLYIN] Re: Digest list: Ercoupe Hangar Flying cross wind and coupes ----[Please read http://ercoupers.com/disclaimer.htm before following any advice in this forum.]---- Jim wrote: > Our planes, all of them, 415 through the M-10s have trailing > arm landing gear. Even the spring gear found on some coupes > extend back away from where they are attached. This > multiplies or extends the force, Dan described the force, > that straightens the plane to the center line. Jim, I'd suggest that the fact that our gear is trailing arm has nothing to do with the efficacy of the auto-rotation to line up with the direction of motion . . . . . . except . . . in that it's a simple way to put the main gear wheels where the designer wanted with less structural weight. Rather than having to build a front-spar-to-rear-spar structure strong enough to handle the gear, Fred was able to simply mount the main gear to the strongest structure, the main spar, yet put the wheel where he wanted it. For the physics of the auto-rotation to line up with the direction of motion, a gear mounted vertically directly above the desired wheel location would work just as well as our trailing arm gear -- as long as that vertical gear is strong enough to handle the side-load. Ed Burkhead http://edburkhead.com ed -at- edburkhead???.com (change -at- to @ and remove "???") ======================================================================== ====== To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm ============================================================================== To leave this forum go to: http://ercoupers.com/lists.htm
