My new and first plane

[6320012s 12]

166nflyer, so your mod was changing the mount location on bottom of cylinder to the floor itself. What distance from the pivot tube did you end up at?

Imft did you remove the tail wheel springs also?

Thanks for all the help guys

I've only flown tri gear. My instructor is setting me up with an aerobatics pilot to teach me the tail dragger

 

The attached pictures show the mod. The wooden dowels are just the last itteration of the design.  I never got around to making new pedals with the correct geometry.   Say the left rudder is full forward, this geometry puts the toe pedal into your left foot, and pulls the toe pedal on the right away from your foot.  My first ground loop was due to the maule castoring free when it wasn't supposed to, but my second one was not.   In that instence, I got some quartering tail wind on touch down.  It was after the second incident that I realized I wanted full control of the brakes.   With the original design, even if you manage to not give opposing brake when inputing hard rudder, the toe pedal is farther away and harder to fully depress.   With the change, the more rudder you give, the easier it is to add brake.

[EDMO 1078]

Guess that's why the Kitfox 5 MCs are attached to the floor brackets and not to the tubes....

EDMO

[SuberAvid 617]

Congrats on the new bird.  The motor on your plane looks like a Stratus; it has a Stratus redrive, thermostat and carb setup.  The older ones used the dual drive belts but then went to a single 3" wide belt  Those are probably pretty old so really inspect them for aging cracks or just shange out the belt to a 3" to be safe (they are under $100).  It looks like the air filters are directly on the elbows to the carbs which is the stock Stratus setup as well.  It should be a great running motor for you.

[fusionfab 14]

166nflyer- I'm having a difficult seeing those pictures, and am pretty Interested. If you can email them to me that would be great

fusion_fabrication@yahoo.ca

I'm yet to fly a tail dragger so any and all modifications to make it easier for a newbie I'm interested in.

Suberavid - thanks for the comment. I've looked at your plane a number of times I love it. I'm just doing my door outer skins and glass now and was looking at the overlapping piece you have on yours. Is that .050 aluminum or thinner?

Also with regards to the earlier comment about the castering in the rear. Can I replace the springs with two small tie rod arms instead to lock the wheel in place?

[Av8r3400 1178]

Fusion, the springs at the end of the control cables have nothing to do with the wheel castering.  

 

Castering is a function built into the body of the tailwheel.  This function disconnects the rudder cables from the wheel allowing it to caster like a shopping cart wheel.

[IFMT 36]

Fusion, lift up the tail and put a saw horse with a little cushion under the fuselage where the tow bar hook up is. Now turn your tailwheel all the way one way and then back. It should release and then lock again in sync with the rudder. Problem is when the rudder/ tailwheel is kicked over hard as a result of over corrective rudder you have a damn good chance of letting go into free caster mode. Then you are limited to only rudder to try and steer it back. The trick is to look long (far) down the strip and get after straightening her out before you have it going sideways. Take the cam off the maule and you will always have positive steering with the tailwheel.

[fusionfab 14]

Ohh ok, now I follow. I just went and did that so the tail wheel is now locked. But I will look at removing the cam inacase it switches to free caster. Thanks guys

[IFMT 36]

It WILL go to free caster. Removing the cam keeps the lock pin engaged. You better get some serious lessons in and about taildraggers or you will be joining the ground loopers group. Avids are very twitchy on the ground. Short coupled means the tail wants to be in front. 

 

Ohh ok, now I follow. I just went and did that so the tail wheel is now locked. But I will look at removing the cam inacase it switches to free caster. Thanks guys

[fusionfab 14]

Yes I've already arranged it with someone who's been flying them for years. We will just start on my plane as his is an aerobatic single seater. But until then I'll make the mods suggested by everyone here. I appreciate the help

[SuberAvid 617]

166nflyer- I'm having a difficult seeing those pictures, and am pretty Interested. If you can email them to me that would be great

fusion_fabrication@yahoo.ca

I'm yet to fly a tail dragger so any and all modifications to make it easier for a newbie I'm interested in.

Suberavid - thanks for the comment. I've looked at your plane a number of times I love it. I'm just doing my door outer skins and glass now and was looking at the overlapping piece you have on yours. Is that .050 aluminum or thinner?

Also with regards to the earlier comment about the castering in the rear. Can I replace the springs with two small tie rod arms instead to lock the wheel in place?

The door skin aluminum is either .020 or .024; it doesn't have to be very thick. 

 

A couple more suggestions on flying an Avid TD; if you can afford it and your plane doesn't already have it, invest in wide gear (either wide bungee gear or aluminum spring gear).  This will be much more forgiving and give much better control than the stock gear.  Also replace the stock brakes with Matco MC4 master cylinders and double or triple puck calipers and also rework your pedal geometry to mount the master cylinder piston closer to the pedal for more brake leverage.  There are a couple ways to do this and the discussion threads describing this are somewhere on here.  I also suggest that you start off flying and landing on grass or gravel rather than pavement; once you get it down good then go to pavement.

[fusionfab 14]

Suberavid - ahh I wish I had read your post earlier haha. I just removed the landing gear and hardware last night, cleaned, prepped and painted. I actually was pondering the idea of building/modifying the current set for wider but wasn't sure how positive of an upgrade it'd be. So you're saying that it's a modification I should do? Because I can still always start on them while everything is off.

[EDMO 1078]

I think that about all who fly these birds would agree that "wider is better" - my design book says that the LG width should be 25% of the wingspan, but getting them out much past 7 foot tire-span is usually not done, even on Kitfoxes with 32 foot wings.

The only other controversy is whether the bungee-cabane gear may give softer bumps than the spring-cabane gear.....

I use the Grove aluminum spring gear.

EDMO

Edited 12 Dec 2014 by Ed In Missouri

[High Country 69]

The gear on our Bird sits just shy of 8' outside to outside and I just completed a whole new gear for a friends KF IV that sits about 7 1/2' outside to outside. We are running bungee struts rather than the springs and love them. I have built all the jigs to fabricate complete gears for both the avid and KF and hope to start building them sometime next year if anyone is interested. I would say that any wide gear modification is better than the original gear. this is probably the best upgrade you can do. IMHO 

 

Edited 12 Dec 2014 by High Country

[1avidflyer 1983]

What size of bungees did you use, and how many wraps?  Thanks,  Jim Chuk

[High Country 69]

Jim Chuk, the original KF bungees work great with 3 wraps on front cross over and 4 wraps on back. I made specific ones for my avid gear but can't remember off the top of my head what the size is. I don't want to steal this thread if there is an interest I would be happy to start a new thread. 

 

-Robert-

Edited 12 Dec 2014 by High Country

[SuberAvid 617]

I bought a set of the Airdale wide bungee gear for my Avid MKIV and built a taller wide bungee gear for my Avid+.  In my opinion it is well worth it, one of these days it will make the difference between a messed up plane or just a less than stellar landing.

 

High Country, It sounds like you have proven set up so would think you should be able to sell them if you make them.  It looks like you are mounting them on a subframe.  Does that then pin into the regular gear leg mounts?   Just wondering how easy that would be for Jeff to adapt to his Merlin or if you could build it to fit his fusalage given the mount dimensions?

[fusionfab 14]

Well I decided that for now I'll reinstall the stock gear but eventually fabricate a new wider set, strengthen the truss and go from there. This being my first plane and will start flying it with an experienced TD pilot I decided to leave stock in case for some odd reason I end up selling. So with that said I was wondering with the ea81 avids how are the aircraft owners doing there bungees? I bought 20 feet of 3/8 bungee but just wondeing if I stick with the stock setup? The ones I removed were 1/2 and about 90" long and wrapped 7 times. However he had also wrapped 5/16 around a couple times on top of that. That's all removed now.

[Jbird 15]

High country I own a avid mk4 and I'm very interested in the gear you are building how do I find out more ? Thanks Jbird

[High Country 69]

High country I own a avid mk4 and I'm very interested in the gear you are building how do I find out more ? Thanks Jbird

 

 

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