The landing gear on my Lightning has a reputation for fragility. Its basically an aluminum version of the Vans gear. In my opinion, excessively tapered, there have been several incidents where the axle weldments have broken off the lower taper of the main gear and the nose gear is easy to fold up, Vans not faring too much better with their steel nosegear. Plenty of flip over accidents what could have been much less damaging had they not dug in.
I found some pictures by a chap in NY state who built the only tail drager Lightning in existence. Unfortunately he had an engine out after 4 hours (brand new Jabiru 3300 gen 3 engine) and then had one of his mains lose the axle weldment resulting in a violent ground loop on the engine out landing which totalled the airplane.
Im considering a trailing link design and using a motorcycle rear suspension strut to provide actual energy absorbtion and kill bounce. It would make the airplane a lot more durable and certainly could be faired pretty nice. Whereas if the stork legs in the current design fail, its very likely to total the airplane.
I found some pictures by a chap in NY state who built the only tail drager Lightning in existence. Unfortunately he had an engine out after 4 hours (brand new Jabiru 3300 gen 3 engine) and then had one of his mains lose the axle weldment resulting in a violent ground loop on the engine out landing which totalled the airplane.
Im considering a trailing link design and using a motorcycle rear suspension strut to provide actual energy absorbtion and kill bounce. It would make the airplane a lot more durable and certainly could be faired pretty nice. Whereas if the stork legs in the current design fail, its very likely to total the airplane.
