Hi All,
Doing a bit of pre Christmas shopping for myself and thinking about tailwheels for my RV-3B build. I'm aiming to build a light and fast RV3 and would like to move away from the standard tailwheel fork. With my current aircraft I mainly operated off tarmac but regularly visit grass strips and occasionally strips with loose stones so prop clearance is a player.
I've been looking at the Flyboys Screaming Eagle and Doug Bell forks with lightweight tailwheel (5.5" diameter) and the JDair tailwheel fork. All will reduce prop clearance but not significantly, my concern is if I also go for smaller lamb main wheels (to reduce drag from the spats) that'll bring the prop even closer to the ground. The 'fix' for this is to go with a 4" tailwheel but that introduces different issues that come with a small tailwheel... My Taylor Titch has a 4" tailwheel but that's a smaller aircraft and 270lb lighter than the RV will be!
Everything is a compromise but wondered if anyone has real world experience they could share? Here's a photo I found of the standard and Lamb (now Cheng) 11-400X5 spats
_____________
Cameron
Scotland
RV6A - bought and sold
Taylor Titch - Flying
RV3B - Empenage almost finished
Doing a bit of pre Christmas shopping for myself and thinking about tailwheels for my RV-3B build. I'm aiming to build a light and fast RV3 and would like to move away from the standard tailwheel fork. With my current aircraft I mainly operated off tarmac but regularly visit grass strips and occasionally strips with loose stones so prop clearance is a player.
I've been looking at the Flyboys Screaming Eagle and Doug Bell forks with lightweight tailwheel (5.5" diameter) and the JDair tailwheel fork. All will reduce prop clearance but not significantly, my concern is if I also go for smaller lamb main wheels (to reduce drag from the spats) that'll bring the prop even closer to the ground. The 'fix' for this is to go with a 4" tailwheel but that introduces different issues that come with a small tailwheel... My Taylor Titch has a 4" tailwheel but that's a smaller aircraft and 270lb lighter than the RV will be!
Everything is a compromise but wondered if anyone has real world experience they could share? Here's a photo I found of the standard and Lamb (now Cheng) 11-400X5 spats
_____________
Cameron
Scotland
RV6A - bought and sold
Taylor Titch - Flying
RV3B - Empenage almost finished
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