You are probably not like me. You can probably land one of these T-28’s without buggering up the nose gear. I re-glued it a few times . It was beyond re-gluing as the foam gets a bit soft after repeated beatings with terra firma. The plastic insert was fractured in 2 places as well.
The red arrows show fracture stress points at sharp edges of the plastic molding. Note also, the oil covered belly. These round engines ALL leak 😉
So I made a scarf plate out of .063″ 6061-T6 aluminum as I did not have any 2024-T3 around. Hey, it’s what I had! It’s pretty small so it does not weigh much. Kind of a hack job but, it does the job of spreading the loads out to undamaged airframe foam. Note the screw hole. This helps couple the load from the plastic molding.
Scarf plate attached. Note I cut away some foam on the starboard side to match the port side. Note the screw. I used a bead of silicone around the perimeter to spread the load from the flat aluminum to the uneven foam.
The back lighting made this picture difficult. Note that there is a gap between the nose strut and the aluminum scarf plate. I’m sure this will be bumped into on landings and take the load off of the broken, glued, beat up plastic molding. If you zoom in you can see the bead of silicon glue.
So, we’ll see how well this holds up and hopefully it won’t form any more stress concentration points.
See you at the field,
Bob K
