were considered, like going hydraulic, or
increasing substantially the size of this ram to
make it functional. However no solution was
satisfying. So I had once again to depart from
the original design and completely think “out
of the box”.
I ended up creating a side retract box that was
operating a trunion/torque rod connected to
the lower strut bracket. This retract would
include a piston facing the rear, passing
through the main gear bulkhead and locking
flats at each end of the torque trunion. This
showed good promise on the cinematics wor-
kbench of the CAD software, so I 3D printed
prototypes to test them in the plane.
The rear brace actuator did not end up beco-
ming a dummy unit, however. I found out that
it could be used as a rear stop to allow fineThey include fully sealed and dust proof
ABEC 5 ball bearings and exactly scale rub-
ber 3D printed tires as well as laser printed
scale brake assemblies.
While working on the CAD of the Crusader
gear, we had already started building the first
Crusader prototype. Airframe number 1 was
made from monolithic glass and carbon fibre
with our super strong Finnish birch aircraft
grade plywood. This ended up in a very heavy
setup and as I was processing our weight and
balance worksheet, I quickly realized that the
plane would end up well over 20 kgs wet.
This was well over my design wing load of 350
grs/ dm2. So I decided to use this for static
display only.
This is the plane that was on our stand at Top
Gun 2017.tuning of the wheel toe (the toe changes as
the gear moves forward and proper strut sta-
bility is essential to directional stability on this
plane).
The main wheels are 100% scale designed
and feature a series of 12 custom manufactu-
red M2 x 24 mm titanium socket head screws.AUTHOR: OLIVIER NICOLAS
The plane with the wings and engine hatch opened. In the middle, the two “O” shaped main gear and wing
bulkheads are visible, as well as the wing hinges. On the right side, one can see the wing incidence servos.A CAD rendering of the stabilizer block,
large needle bearings and control armA picture of the very realistic hybridCNC machined/3D printed nose strut. The bare Al 2024 main gear assembly before white painting.A CAD rendering of the wheel assembly.
Note the ultra scale 3D printed brake cover.The very specific main gear custom retract before assembling to the main gear. This picture shows the graphene internal structure of the 3D printed tire.Crusader_Layout 1 07/03/18 17.13 Pagina 6