Jet Model Airplane Aluminum Landing Gear Repair (TIG aluminum)

[DVA]

I must first say nice repair. Hope it holds up. I have been flying model airplanes for over 20 years and have learned that sometimes those things like the ground much more than the air.

[jakeru]

Are you guys going to turn it back down (or file it back down?) or is that not critical? Would copper work as a backer as nice as it does on steel?

I could certainly file it down for aesthetics, but it would weaken it for sure if I did that, and since it sounds like strength is more important from what the customer tells me, I will leave it. It is not interfering with the fuselage, (which I have not yet seen) I am told there is a good deal of room. (I'm still not sure exactly how much that means... I had a thought of adding a reinforcing rib but wasn't sure how much room I had exactly.)

Good work as usual. Did he mention how much other damage there was $$? That is a big boy toy for sure. I've seen them, unreal.

Thanks guys. It sounded like this was the main part damaged, and all that was preventing it from being flown again, although based on the landing gear completely broken apart, I imagine there are at least some other gnarly scrapes and cosmetic damage to the fuselage, wings, etc!

Looks like tuff piece to repair pretty thin tube you need to post picks of the plane sitting on landing gear and maybe in flight nice job let us know if it all works when it is reassembled

I certainly hope to see some pictures of this thing assembled also, at some point. I will certainly share them with you guys if I do.

I wonder if these landing gear assemblies could be designed with break-away parts, kinda like the shear pin in a snow thrower, that would break on overloading and provide an easier fix-it point. Or maybe those 100 mph landings aren't frequent enough to need them.

I can't really speak for how frequent the 100mph crash landings are. Except that if it were me flying the controls, it's probably be way too often. I'd probably press the controls in the opposite direction of how I intended to make the plane go.