This weekend I just didn't have the energy to explore and develop, so I decided I'd keep things moving by working on old stuff. What's happened is that I had to fix the gas stove at my grandmother's house, and also had to finalize some temporary car repairs I did last week, and get ready for some big repairs next weekend, and somehow after all that I was a bit short on gumption.
So, what I did was get out the old HP-18 landing gear weldment jigs and start fabbing up parts for the HP-24 landing gear. They're basically the same system, differing only in relatively inconsequential details. In fact, you can trace most of the HP-18 landing gear parts back to the HP-14 - for most of the bits, only the second digit of the part numbers have been changed. If you look at the Articles, July p22, p24, and p25 at Wayne Paul's site you can see how the parts are arranged.
I figure we're going to need at least a couple-three sets right from the get-go, and that I ought to have at least one set ready for developing the retract handle mechanism, so I might as well get started on it.
Through Saturday afternoon and all day Sunday, all I did was cut out little chunks of 1/8" thick 4130 steel using my chop saw, shear, and grinder. Well, I also drilled some holes and welded some of the bits together.
Hopefully, next weekend the rear crank seal replacement on my car will go smoothly, and I can spend all of at least one day at the shop welding together more of these landing gear bits.
Here's a batch of 24-577-12 plates and 24-577-13 gudgeons for the forked end of the overcenter knee.
The jig I made for joining the 577-12 and 577-13 in the correct alignment, loaded for welding. I'm just zapping these thick plates together with my MIG box. For the tube-to-tube and tube-to-plate joints I'll use my oxy-acytelene torch.
New fork on the left, a Schreder original on the right. Note that I've made the -13 gudgeons a bit short at the narrow end; that lets me cut them easily from a 2" strip of steel. I think it's an acceptable change; the stress levels are fairly low at that end of the fork.
The six completed forks for the first three undercarriage sets.
The weekend's production: Six welded upper forks, about a dozen each 577-12 and 577-2 plates, eight or ten 577-4 lower fork gudgeons, and eight or ten 577-3 lower end caps. Dick Schreder made his 577-3s as round disks, but I'll probably just chop the corners off of these squares to make octagons. Not shown are several blind blanks for the 577-6 lower leg bushing that I chopped from 1/2" steel rod. This week I'll drill and face them on the lathe, hopefully for welding next weekend.
page updated 5 February 2007 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2007 HP Aircraft,
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