The International Cessna^® 170 Association

cfzxo wrote:Richard, It sounds like they predate the lady legs. I saw a set of 180 gear legs on barnstormers , The pictures were not of 180 gear, even though the indivual said that they were off a 180, they definitely were not 180 gear legs. they looked like older 170 gear ( pre lady legs ) I sent a message asking for the serial numbers, still no reply as of today. I thought that maybe the person truly didn't know the difference.

hilltop170 wrote:I don't know what "cankles" are.

How about posting pictures of the gear? Both face-on and side shots should be sufficient to determine what they are. L-19 gear look similar.

Aryana wrote:Another thing to consider is that the longer the gear legs, the more the landing gear geometry is prone to ground loop. Moving the main wheels farther forward that stock is undesirable for handling and should be done if additional prop clearance is absolutely necessary.

Reply: In some cases this is true However in my case with the TCM IO-360 installed my tail became so light that moving the gears forward actually returned the aircraft to a better gear balance. My gear is the early 180 gear legs (Gear Aft) however the wheels are still 3 inches forward from the early straight 170 gear legs. It handles much better than my earlier 170 gear legs did. My prop is an 80 inch diameter constant speed. The extra clearance is neat but it was not required. But it looks and flies amazingly well. Further before the 180 gear leg change I was afraid I could have easily tipped the airplane over during hard braking. I could lift the tail easily on handed. Now the weight distribution is more like it was before the IO-360. I worked all of these things out mathematically before I committed to doing any of the work. The early 180 gear just makes sense for this mod. If I had not done the IO-360 mod I would not have thought it necessary.

Sure it's only moving it only a little bit, but someday if your airplane happens to be swapping direction faster than a politician after election day you might wish you had that extra 0.5 second to keep it from cranking around.

Reply: My actual CG was further forward after the mod than original and I have to load stuff in the back of airplane to get it into a normal CG location to be desirable. Until I moved the battery to the back which helped more than I would have expected.The airplane has been intentionally ground looped to find how it handles. It has no more tendency to ground loop than it did before the IO 360 Mod

The self energizing, runaway nature of ground loops in taildraggers means any change in main gear position forward acts exponentially on the handling of the airplane.
The NTSB will probably support your view/

Better men/pilots than I have ground looped so I need all the help I can get.

This is why I recommend ground loop training: https: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFvD7Ok0ghY excerpted from this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y3v1-WMJS8
My tail wheel instructor who learned to fly in the 40's gave me ground loop training. It has been discussed here before. I would not recommend trying it without an instructor who is familiar with it. The only thing I was taught additionally was to roll the ailerons into the direction of the ground loop which helps keep the wing on the outside from dropping to the pavement. I have done it both to the right and the left as currently configured. This procedure has saved my but more than once for various reason all of which had nothing to to do with the position of the gear only that it was a tail-dragger.
Jim

Maybe the wheels aft 180 gear is closer to stock geometry? I dunno...

Ryan Smith wrote:

hilltop170 wrote:I don't know what "cankles" are.

How about posting pictures of the gear? Both face-on and side shots should be sufficient to determine what they are. L-19 gear look similar.

Cankles are a portmanteau of calf and ankle...meaning that there is little to no change in thickness of one's leg as it attaches to the foot. My legs do not narrow to 1 7/8" at the ankle and then expand. It's a constant taper.

I will have to figure out a method to post pictures because my phone pictures are too large and it's a pain to put them in Photoshop to resize. Perhaps a Flickr account.