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The student pilot, learning to land, and wheel pants

NinerBikes

Well Known Member
Doing pattern work now in my lessons in my RV-12 with an instructor.

Yesterday I had what I'll call a "firm" landing on the main landing gear. Not a bad jolt, or falling out of the sky, stalling 3 feet up or more, but certainly could have been smoother. 5 Good ones, 4 of those at an airport I've never been to... KCMA.

How much can a set of main wheel pants take for a more than firm landing before I incur damage? Or should I just remove the 2 main wheel pants and put them back on later? Really don't want to scratch them up of break them with some dumb rookie pilot move.

What do others suggest?
 
I took mine off after a few years, but primarily to facilitate checking and adding air pressure. It makes my annual a little easier, and if you get a flat you will at least be able to refill the tire to tug the plane to the hangar.
 
Other suggestions

I expect that landings that are hard enough to damage the wheel pants are possibly going to damage other parts of the airframe also!

Other suggestions? (the following are things that worked for me)

Look at the far end of the runway as you round out and flare.
Don't be afraid to go around if needed.
Discuss with your CFI about practicing flying along just above the runway, without actually landing.

Sounds like you are doing OK though with a high percentage of good landings already. Just keep working at doing circuits to get the brain trained.
 
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I took mine off after a few years, but primarily to facilitate checking and adding air pressure. It makes my annual a little easier, and if you get a flat you will at least be able to refill the tire to tug the plane to the hangar.

I guess you never know when a flat is going to happen, although the first thing I did when it made it's trip home to California from South Carolina and 21 hours of cross country was to install brand new tires and tubes on the mains. The originals were OK, but the right tires tread was looking somewhat thin on the outside of the tread pattern, and the tires were 8 years old.
 
I always change tubes with tires, but I keep the old ones for an emergency and to scavenge the Schrader valve cores as spares. That actually saved me a lot of hassle once when I developed a valve leak and used a replacement core off an old tire.
 
If it was me, I'd remove them.

Aesthetics aside, the purpose of those fairings is to improve aerodynamics -- in other words, more speed and efficiency. If you're involved in the flight training stage of your flying career, you're probably not going to benefit much from having the fairings on the aircraft anyway since you're flying locally and doing a lot of maneuvering and pattern work.

Removing them makes it much easier to check the tire condition, brake pads, and inflation levels as well. Speaking of inflation, since I became more regimented about maintaining proper tire inflation, I've yet to experience a flat.

Just my $0.02...
 
Something to check

Niner,
If you have not done so already, you may want to torque check the bolts on each MLG leg on the aircraft since you acquired it. You do not want to have any free play in any direction in these assemblies, especially if you will be doing a lot of student (possibly hard) landings.

Some aircraft had a history of cracks in the main channel at the gear mounting bolts, since corrected (we hope) by SB 12-11-09 and addendum.

There are 5 bolts on each leg to check. Two (2) AN-4, Two (2) AN-5, and One (1) AN-6, each leg. Easy to accomplish, see plans and MM. A helper is needed, use standard torque values for the bolt size per the MM and add an allowance for prevailing torque of the Nylock nuts. The nuts can be torqued on all of them, I would not try to torque from the bolt head side as the bolts are a tight fit in the holes.

Just another 2¢ worth from an interested observer...
 
Some aircraft had a history of cracks in the main channel at the gear mounting bolts, since corrected (we hope) by SB 12-11-09 and addendum.

I'm highly critical of this SB as a complete remedy for the under-design of aluminum gear channel carry-thru. I suggest legacy 12 owners check for cracks in the aluminum channel, especially at rear AN-5 bolts.
 
Some aircraft had a history of cracks in the main channel at the gear mounting bolts, since corrected (we hope) by SB 12-11-09 and addendum.

I'm highly critical of this SB as a complete remedy for the under-design of aluminum gear channel carry-thru. I suggest legacy 12 owners check for cracks in the aluminum channel, especially at rear AN-5 bolts.

We just did this on inspection 2 weeks back... checked for cracks and checked /retorqued all the bolts and nuts on saddles, both inboard and outboard, both sides. All good. Went through everything canopy back... everything forward of firewall will be done in either late Oct or very early November. Plane is good through end of 10-2020.
 
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After I did the SB with the doubler plates my bolts have passed the annual torque check every annual (about 6 now). In the previous two torque checks I had to tighten each bolt.
 
After I did the SB with the doubler plates my bolts have passed the annual torque check every annual (about 6 now). In the previous two torque checks I had to tighten each bolt.

Good to know. Builder of this plane was really on top of all the SB's, and getting the parts installed in a timely manner.
 
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