Posted Monday, November 14, 2011 @ 05:13 PM  

Some folks have mentioned the their gear doors are not closing properly when retracted.

I noticed the same thing on mine and took a carefull look at what was hapeening with the gear door springs.

Apparently on mine the spring wires that go under the washer were straight and tended to bind and not close the doors properly.

The solution was to curve the spring so that it does not bind during its full range of motion.

Look at how I curved the spring with some pliers in the picture below.

Now the gear doors close perfectly and do not bind at all.

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 @ 11:19 AM  

That might account for why mine were binding.

In any case, they don't now, since I curved the spring where it passes under the bolt/washer arrangement.

I'd be interested to see what the originals do look like if anyone cares to snap a pic when convenient.

Posted Monday, November 28, 2011 @ 12:06 PM  

Perhaps the bolt/washer arrangement was different than what I have.

What was happening was that when the gear doors would close the straight part of the spring would get to an angle where the straight part would bind between the bolt/washer and the metal of the door. The spring wire would flex through this binding but the friction of that would stick the doors a bit and they would not smoothly close or even hang up during ground testing.

This would be ultimately due to the spring coil location not being exactly center of the door hinge and the resulting offset of geometry.

Probably the air pressure while in flight would help the doors close but since it was an easy fix, and I remember some folks halving trouble with positive closing in flight, I decided to remove the cause of the binding.

Now the doors slam shut quite nicely on the ground and should do equally well or better in the air.