hunterdave99
Member
About a year ago, I built my FT Spear. For this build I used quite a few 3D printed parts. Most are available on Thingiverse. I wanted it to have landing gear because the field I flew on at the time was paved and didn't have a good grassy area to land. I designed the main gear struts in Tinkercad to slide down from above and extend out the bottom of the fuselage. A straight axle, wheels, and a couple collars complete the mains. I 3D printed the FPV compartment and used it to house a home made steerable nose gear. The front tire and wheel are also 3D printed. I had read that with wings, you want the landing gear to give it a slight nose-up stance. All this does add a little bit of weight and drag but it can easily handle it. I run it with a D-Power D3530 1100kv motor, 9" pusher prop, and a 50A Skywalker ESC all on a 4S 2200mah battery. The ESC never gets hot being open to the air flow. I have the whole plane covered in packing tape (clear on top and red on the bottom) using the Experimental Airlines technique and reinforced the leading edges with red duct tape. The wingtips also act as skids and combined with the gear prevent the prop from ever touching the ground. After a few harder landings I realized the wing needed better attachment support to the fuselage on the upper part. On a hard landing the weight of the wing would flex down a bit and start to pull away on top. I ran an 8mm carbon fiber arrow through the wing, thru the fuselage, and into the other wing. This helped significantly. Recently I was flying it and decided to film it for a 1 year review. Wouldn't you know it, the gear finally snapped on a pretty hard landing. It was an easy fix though and I had it back up the next week even stronger than ever. This set up is pretty beefy as I have brought it down pretty hard more than a few times.
Here is the video:
Here is the video:
