New Wheels for the Old Bird

Hello all,

As you know, if you have been keeping up on my posts, that I have been trying to get used to using the landing gear on my Wild Hawk.  In using the landing gear, I have noticed that the wheels do not work very well on the rough surfaces that I have as runways.  My Dad's place has a lot of grass, dirt, and gravel.  While my landings have been successful on these surfaces, the wheels really plow in the gravel and dirt and catch on the grass.

So I decided to change the wheel size in the hopes that it will help ease landings and take offs.  Because I did not want to wait, I went down to a local hobby shop and purchased a nice pair of 2 1/2 inch diameter wheels.  They are light weight plastic rims with foam tires and almost as light weight as the original ones are.  At least they do not seem to weigh that much more.

Carefully twisting off retainer

Comparing old and new wheels

It did not require too much effort with a pair of needle nose pliers to take the retainers off of the axles.  I did take care to not damage them as I did not have anything readily available to replace them if the would not go back on.

Close up view

How it looks on the plane

The new wheels had slightly smaller axle holes and so I needed to do some reaming and working on them to get them to go on.  They go on alright now, but they only just barely spin without too much effort.  This should have gone better, but I could not find the needed drill size in my tool box. I could have used some sand paper on the axle, but I couldn't find that either.  Oh well, close enough.

Now it's of to some test flights, or take off and landings.

Thanks for stopping by my blog and please post comments, good or bad.  Be sure to come back and check for future posts.