FT Viggen Landing Gear

FT Viggen Landing Gear

After a trip to my local hobby shop, I picked up some 1/8 wire and some wheels for about 9 bucks. Six small wheels, because I wanted to double up the wheel in the rear. And I make mistakes.

I planned on taping the rear gear to the bottom of the fuseage/wings. I bent the wire with the following dimensions:

I just taped the rear gear to the bottom of the wing. The "V" bend is just to make it stable.

The front was bent to hold the front wheel and then go straight up through the bottom and into the top part of the fuseage. I drilled out some popcicle sticks and cut them to size and glued them to the top and bottom of the bottom part of the fuseage and also to the inside of the top of the fuseage.

To have some kind of control, I hot glued a servo horn that I drilled to the correct size to the wire after I placed it in the plane. I made a small pushrod to go from the servo horn to the servo that I glued to the side wall in the battery bay.

This works out great because the Viggen is 3 channel, leaving a rudder channel open with most receivers (4ch and up).

To secure the wire in place, I used wheel collars on the top and bottom of the bottom of the fuselage.

 Trying it all out

Got to the field and the winds were gusting at 20-30mph. We waited until the wind died down a bit and then did some taxi tests. The wind did blow it over a few times, but I was able to drive it around. After talking things over with my buddy Steve, mainly about how to line back up on the runway without a rudder, I took a flight around. Here's the video:

When I landed, the hot glue came off and the front wheel turned sideways. We laughed and that's what we were calling the "Brakes." I don't think the gear did anything to the flight characteristics; it may have slightly, I have to try it again on a calmer day.

Thanks so much to the guys at Flite Test Community Podcast for having me on the show. I was truly honored!
If you guys have any questions or comments, please let me know!

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