Jungster 1 & 2 aircraft

[Dominic Eller]

Wow those are some great pics from you all and interesting history. I idolized Peter McDermott as a youngster building models. His Sopwith Snipe was one I really admired. TFF, the Rembrandt call is spot on! Imagine having a McDermott in the house!
love the Great Lakes idea F14th!
Flitzer pilot when I’m next I’m England (my wife is a Pom) I’m inviting myself to look at all your project! you certainly have had your fingers in a lot of pies !!
and I want to know more about them.

 

[Dominic Eller]

Not much Jungster progress lately, weather has been good so lots of work flying Paraglider’s
Also doing the Rotax 5 yr rubber replacement on CDC. What a pain in the ass that is! But soon she’ll be on amphibious floats

 

[flitzerpilot]

Hi Dominic. You'd be more than welcome but give me plenty of notice so I can tidy my workshop! :0)

BTW, I am in Wales, not England, but still part of the UK.

 

[Fighting 14]

You guys make me jealous. Floats on my 180 were always on my bucket list. Probably not gonna happen. Getting too old and flying and fuel getting too expensive. But man am I envious. Flying floats in N.Z. ranks pretty high on the cool factor list. My day trying to straighten the right main gear track was a bust. Tried the cheater bar TFF but to no success. Seems all the stress goes to the aft gear member and I could see that it was going to bend or fail if I persisted. The right side main gear is toed in about 2- 2.5 degrees. In the cockpit taxiing you see it as having to carry small pressure on the right rudder pedal all the time. Releasing pressure and the airplane wants to track left at a very increasing rate. It needs to be remedied. I can't see an easy fix. Going to require removing the fabric, and heating the tube cluster at the axle junction and bending it, or cutting off one or both upper gear mounts and re-align and re-weld. Fair amount of work but not huge huge. Landing gears are easy to recover and paint. The left gear shows straight. Having only a Tig I don't know how to heat and twist the lower gear. Probably easiest to leave the gear bolted on and go in search of a torch or torches capable of getting the the lower tube cluster red and then apply some twist with the cheater. So that's where I am at. What do you guys think?? Help! Can't fly anyway so now is the time to do it.

 

[Fighting 14]

Dom is the strip near your house? The floats look awesome!!

Back on the gear subject, is heating the gear to enable a 2 degree twist a No Go due to metallurgical concerns?

 

[TFF]

I would find a torch. The choice is do it on the airplane or build a jig and pull it off. You do need to not shock cool it if you heat it. I don’t know how warm your hangar is but don’t heat it if it’s cold. You might need to make a warm room with still air to do it right.

 

[Fighting 14]

Thanks TFF

 

[Dominic Eller]

Dom is the strip near your house? The floats look awesome!!

Back on the gear subject, is heating the gear to enable a 2 degree twist a No Go due to metallurgical concerns?

The airport that the work is being done at is Wanaka, 45min ish drive from home.

 

[Fighting 14]

Thanks Dom. I remember Wanaka. I found this EAA article which I know has helped me and others may find it useful.

$name

www.eaa.org

 

[Dominic Eller]

Cheers, interesting read

 

[Dominic Eller]

Off topic, kind of, question.
I’m sleeving the float spacer tubes as there is incidents of cracking at the bolt holes resulting in failure. Chap nth of me has it happen to him and alerted me to it.
the factory has gone to a .090 wall thickness in new floats.
I’m internally sleeving with a 1”1/8 .083 tube that will need to be skimmed down to fit the existing tube, by roughly .008 to match the ID of the existing tube.
The question is what kind of maximum tolerance (slop) can I have in order to make the sleeve relatively easy to slide in and remove more than once, the tricky thing is I will need to somehow file down some weld penetration on the inside of the original tube about 6” in from the end. I’m thinking of using a brake cylinder hone to clean the weld penetration out.
I’ll also put a coat of primer on the tubes to help prevent corrosion.
Any input welcome

sometimes metric is just easier huh…

View attachment IMG_5060.mp4

 

[Dominic Eller]

Didn’t realize the last one was a vid

 

[Fighting 14]

Crikey, I don't see a better approach other than what you describe. As far as slop, there are going to be alot of variables as to how straight of a cylinder you are able to achieve. I'm assuming you have a lathe to turn down the inner tube? I'd start at one or two thousandths and work it down from there. You have more experience than I do and you will no doubt end up with a slick setup.

I reset the incidence on my horizontal today. I raised the leading edge about 3/16 of an inch to get the incidence to zero. Worked some more on the gear toe in. I bolted two 2X4s together and clamped them to the rear most leg of the gear. Using a 10 foot cheater bar I put some hard twist to it to no avail. I fear I am going to have to bite the bullet and pull the fabric off the gear legs to get them right. My plan is to build a fixture which will put the gear at the correct 0 degree alignment before I heat it then apply heat at the lower portion of the gear leg where the correction needs to occur, and then SLOWLY let it cool. Hopefully it will end up at a zero angle. It will handle much better if the gear is tracking straight. The way it is now is a bad deal. I double checked both gear again today and it appears they both need some toe out to get to zero. There is a camber issue on the left main as well, so may as well fix that as well. Replacing the fabric on the gear is easy, so that will go very fast. I used Black Randthane last time and it was such a pain in the A that I am going to use Black butyrate this next time. Hopefully my bird will be fixed and roll straight by the time the weather gets flyable. If you have any clever design idea on how to build a rig to preset and hold the track angle whilst still bolted to the airplane I am all ears. I can use the tenpil heat crayons to find the correct temp. What ya think?

 

[Fighting 14]

To clarify, ......... I can get the necessary bend and way beyond that with the cheater bar, but the gear springs back.

 

[TFF]

Heat it up and bend it. Then spend 30 seconds to a minute slowly pulling the torch away slowly making the red dissipate under heat. Don’t shock cool it. It will bend easy so don’t go crazy cranking on it.

 

[Fighting 14]

Thanks TFF. I appreciate the help! That's how I'll do it.

 

[Fighting 14]

Gear are tweaked. Ended up doing it on the airplane. Easier to set the angles and keep them the same. Should be a big improvement. Will begin recovering the legs tomorrow.

 

[Dominic Eller]

Great to hear F14th, I hope the weather didn’t tease you with calm winds and clear skies while doing this!
I’ve not made much progress in the Jungster in the last month or so due to time spent getting the S6S maintenance done and on floats, nearly ready to fit them!

finished the interplane struts except for one since I still can’t get a replacement streamline tube from ACS for the random sized one they sent
I need to sort the wing tips out and then I’ll be ready to cover them.
I’ve dummy fitted up the top fuse panels and trying to sort out what needs to change there because I’m moving the instrument panel forward.

 

[Fighting 14]

Your S6S paint scheme is very cool. Very clever!! The weather has been a turd. Not a day without gusts above 30.
So no worries. I am adding ribs with lightning holes to the gear legs in order to get that streamlined look like the Jungmeister gear. I'll post a pic as soon they are further along. I hope your gear is on the money. You don't want to have to straighten them. If you do, make small corrections until they are finally right. Like TFF said, it is easy to over bend. If you decide you have to go that route, I will get into greater detail for you about what worked.

 

[Fighting 14]

Light ply ribs JB Welded to gear legs. Varnish on the ribs and zinc chromate on the steel to go before adding Ceconite.