Crash Jr.
Registered User
Anchorage, AK
That's exactly it. The overall structure of the plane (gear and fuselage) has to scale to match the load that's placed on it. A little lightweight PA-11 or J3 can run the stock gear and do some horrible things to it and never have a failure. Even a stock PA-18 on 31's when flown reasonably isn't overly abusive on the gear or fuselage structure so you have an equal loading between the gear and fuselage. The "Heavy Duty" gear came about when guides took stock cubs and started loading them heavily, running the biggest tires and doing pretty abusive things to the plane so then the stock gear failed. So then the gear gets bigger/thicker/heavier and so do the struts, and now you move the failure point to the fuselage. What follows is aftermarket frame builders beefing up gear fittings and sleeving the fuselage where the gear fittings are and you're back to a good place but the overall plane is much heavier and harder on gear and gear fittings. Energy dissipation is a factor of weight and speed so when you up either of those things you have to make up for it in structure.
It's all very much dependent on the mission and how much you carry in the plane. The decisions on gear and various reinforcements follows those parameters. Obviously there are outliers to this as there are some folks that can break an anvil but this is a generalization.
It's all very much dependent on the mission and how much you carry in the plane. The decisions on gear and various reinforcements follows those parameters. Obviously there are outliers to this as there are some folks that can break an anvil but this is a generalization.