One of the most common problems with any of the bigger birds has been landing gears, almost all of the planes now on the market having gears that are just plain too weak to adequately handle the weight of a plane 20 lbs or heavier, Paul Sims had just about the first Giant Scale plane in the Sacramento area, his Nosen Champ. He has gone the entire gamut of gear designs, eventually scrapping every one of them, and coming up with something better.

His latest version, and the one that has proven most satisfactory, is the gear shown in the accompanying drawings. It incorporates virtually scale appearance, and sca1e action.

It is a spring-loaded, shock-absorbing gear that is quite simple to build with normal hand tools. Paul's gear is completely cut out of 3/8" plate aluminum, however, a little ingenuity could substitute quite a bit of plywood Not much weight would be saved, but. the shock cylinder might be easier for some if it is a piece of brass tube imbedded in a plywood gear leg.

The shock tube, and the axle leg, are simply 1/4" steel rod, with appropriate flats filed on the ends. The shock attaching fork is 1/32 steel, brazed onto the axle leg. This is one area that needs a little special attention. When you braze this fork onto the leg, and let the assembly coo1, the steel is annealed to a very soft condition. This caused problems during hard landings; the axle bent. at this point. To avoid this problem, heat the fork-axle area up to a bright red, then quench it in water until cool. This will greatly harden this area,

The ideas Paul has developed in this gear can be adapted to any number of planes that have similar gear designs, and maybe they will start you to thinking about other gear designs as well. The spring-loaded, shock absorbing gears have proven, to me, at 1east, to be the ultimate answer for our birds. They are about the only thing that will work when the plane gets over 25 lbs.

Paul is to be congratulated for his development work in this area, and for taking the time to draw up these outstanding sketches that lets all the rest. of us share his experience. That's what our group is all about.