Brief Description: Attaching Fuselage To Landing Gear
Attaching the main fuselage to the landing gear was a little frustrating. There are multiple attachment points that seem to move out of place once other items are moved in to position. At first I didn't think it was possible to get everything to line up as explained per the instructions. However, after an entire day (what should have taken an hour or so) everything seemed to fall in to place. I found it VERY helpful to use several ratcheting straps and clamps to keep things from moving. I found the most logical place to start was at the attachment point for the lower longeron to the rear skid. B.J. mentions that these two items should be about 1" apart. I had made several spacing jigs of different sizes on my 3D printer (see grey spacer in second set of images) and found that 13/16" made everything work the best. A metal spacer was also fabricated and placed over the bolt for the rear landing gear bracket. Another temporary custom 3/8" printed spacer was placed between the front skid and the two square tubes at the front of the airframe (B.J. called out for about 1/4" in his video). With these spacers in place I was able to achieve between 50-51" at the center of the tail rotor shaft as called for in the plans. Once all measurments were verified, the bushing for the front landing gear was reamed out. A custom 3D plastic jig was printed with bronze bushings so that the hole in the front landing gear bracket could be drlled without having to disassemble the gear from the airframe. Finally the front landing gear lower brackets were attached to the skids. I ended up with about 41" between the front of the rear landing gear skid bracket and the rear of the front landing gear bracket (versus the starting point of 42.5" that B.J. mentions). Once everthing was finalized I verified that there was no more than 1/4" difference in lift at the front of the skids once the tailboom was not supported anymore with my hoist. The ship at this point balances close to the bend at the rear of the skids.
