Thursday, December 1, 2022

Half-Scale Build #72


In the fulness of time I want to avoid the use of any form of undercarriage outside of the base of the 'phone-box' outline, but for the easiest I shall run with a basic set for flight-testing purposes at least. We shall therefore use a set of 'clip-on' cantilevers of identical length and type, so as to keep the parts count down.

As a means of attachment I use what I've used on prototypes in the past in the shape of conduit clamps. Electrical conduits are stock items anywhere in the world and tend toward standard sizes in Imperial or Metric. A reason I work with three-quarter or inch outlines is that they are interchangeable with 20mm and 25mm products and readily available off the shelf. Here I've gone for 20mm clamps because both alloy and carbon tubes are commonly manufactured at each size.

I have riveted three clamps along each side of the foot-well, because they are more normally used for tacking tubing to factory walls than to forming the landing gear on personal air vehicles. There are compact clamps like this with a ratchet mechanism to complete the circle, and because these secure the tubing altogether better then just two along each side would do.