Video Workshop Tip: How To Bend Landing Gear Wire

Video Workshop Tip: How To Bend Landing Gear Wire

Enjoying any hobby requires you to learn and develop new tasks. Most conventional RC airplanes have wheels and if you are building your own or are repairing one, sooner or later you will be dealing with the landing gear. After all, these are the parts that take most of the beating with taxiing, landings and takeoffs. Many modelers will try to bend a new nose gear by hitting it with a hammer. This often times proves to be counter-productive as it is likely you’ll damage the landing gear and maybe even break it.  In this new video tip, DU-BRO’s own Ed Bojan shows a simple and fast way to precisely and effortlessly bend your wire nose gear to the proper angle without fear of breaking it. The only items you’ll need are a bench vise and a small piece of 1/4-inch water pipe.

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(Above) Here’s a typical unbent wire nose wheel landing gear strut.

Figure out how long your nosewheel strut needs to be and mark it on the wire. Now simply secure the landing gear in the vise with the bend location flush with the top of the jaws.  Place the pipe over the wire and bend it slowly.  Once you bottom out, (when the pipe hits the vise), adjust the landing gear position by lifting it out of the jaws a little higher and complete the bend.  This final step is needed since the gear will maintain a little “reflex” and you need to adjust it to get a full 90-degree bend so the wheel will be positioned vertically for proper tracking.

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(Above) Here the wire gear has been clamped into a bench vise with the bend position at the top of the jaws.

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That’s it.  A simple and effective way to bend wire landing gear.  Watch the video to see how easy it really is.

For more information on types and sizes of landing gear available, checkout the DuBro Products website at: www.dubro.com

Nose

(Above) your nose gear should be long enough so the model sits level or very slightly nose down for easy takeoffs and landings.

Updated: May 7, 2018 — 5:02 PM

9 Comments

  1. I don’t see a video!!

  2. Too bad we can’t just buy the steering arm for the Sensei, I have 2 sets of landing gear for that model since I broke the steering arm. But it is a good tip!

  3. Good tip. Thanks. Maybe we should share a little love to the Flyzone Sensei folks….. B-)

  4. Any tips on how to mount is to the fuselage of a homemade airplane? Thanks for the response.

  5. Now all we need is to be able to find hardened spring music wire for the mains. What is out there is about as soft as hot rolled steel. Whatever happened to really springy hard music wire

  6. Lost me at “all you need is a bench vise”

  7. Looking for landing gear wire 1/4,5/16 etc.? Next time you see an old box spring mattress thrown out any where,
    the wire around the springs is very very strong.Makes good landing gears for any plane.
    You will need a bolt cutter to cut this wire. The bigger the mattress,the the larger the wire will be.
    amurriled@yahoo.com

  8. Can we download the video? If so, exactly HOW?

    1. Scroll down … the video is in the post and will play when you hit the white arrow in the middle of the screen.

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