Sukhoi 10cc Back in Flight Ready Status

The other day I once again peeled the landing gear off the Sukhoi 10cc. This airframe has been with me for 4 years now, and her only issue has been her weak knees. I have always held to the practice that it's better the landing gear than the entire bottom of the plane, but I have had nothing but trouble keeping the gear on at all. Since I am quite willing to go back to the 10cc Sukhoi with the red Honda livery, I decided to build this baby up like a fortress. If she crashes the only thing left standing will the the frickin' landing gear!

So a landing in a head wind, a foot off the ground, wind stops, plane drops, should be no problem, but here we are.

And ate a bit of dirt... You can see the gear cleanly came off.

There really wasn't more than a middle block of wood left as the front attachment. This and some epoxy is all that held the front end of the gear in.  The screws were not strong, just RTL Fastener Servo Screws. She tore clean off as designed, just should not have.

This plank of wood on the right is tucked under each side of the fuse, so it's buttressed well. Covered the entire thing with epoxy. The left piece bears no stress as the back of the hardpoint has tabs into the back wall of the landing gear box.

Installed two beams of wood to fortify the fuse and the back of the landing gear box. These are wrapped in epoxy, and the upper piece (closest to the bottom of the fuse) is buttressed under the sides of the fuse.

The gear hardpoint with T-nuts, epoxied in place with 30 min epoxy. The left end (aft) has two large tabs that are in the buttressed and fortified back wall of the box. Put a piece of wood at the near end of the box to fortify this end, the other has one.

Put two long countersunk wood screws straight down into the base. Didn't want to weaken the hardpoint with the countersink, but had to for obvious reasons. This anchors the hardpoint to the piece of wood that is buttressed into the fuse. This is now very damn solid.

Further insurance. I put another long wood screw through the center of the landing gear through the hardpoint into the box. And if that's not enough, I threw two more through a piece of wood that is CA'd to the front wall and the landing gear, angled into the front wall of the box. Like I said, this will be the only part left in a crash. I didn't try to get it perfectly centered...

Painted with gloss black to make it a little less ugly.

Took a moment to install the 14 oz (414cc) Du-Bro tank. It had an 8 oz (255cc) tank. She will fly all day...

The previous post is about my surprise to find a black rubber stopper in the old tank. I usually spend more for the gas stopper I think they should just include. The old tank was splitting at the stopper so it was leaking, but the stopper itself is in perfect condition. I decided to use the new black one that came with the tank.

The Sukhoi 10cc is flight ready!