Landing gear woes
Now that I've got the plane back in my hangar, I can fly it to local fly-ins, breakfasts, etc., but with a warning from Brian (my flight instructor, mentor, and good friend) that these floats are not the strongest he's ever seen, and that the landing gear is the weak point. I shouldn't be considering them to be as strong as the Grove landing gear that I built the plane with, and I ought to be operating them on hard/smooth runways whenever possible....in other words, cut out some of the turf activity. Well, that's hard to do when my place is turf, and so is his, and so are most of the places I frequent. So I kinda let this advice fall on deaf ears, which mine nearly are, and this will bite me in the ass later on....
So now I've modified my plane, after I've flown it for over 1600 hours and to both coasts of the US, into something that I can't fly to all the places that I used to, can't fly it into lakes, etc., because the training is dependent on Brian's time being available, and I'm getting frustrated.
I should point out here that when I built and installed the floats, that I installed a couple of pressure gauges to show the pressure in the gear retract system...a pressure gauge for the "up" direction, and another for the "down" direction. Because I can't see the actual position of the wheels, I operate the switch (operation is electrical/hydraulic pump) in the chosen direction until I see the pressure gauge max out, telling me that the work is done....all four cylinders are at their maximum extension or retraction, whichever the case may be, and I can release the switch. Right from the start of the project, I had built mechanical indicators for the front wheels to show up or down, but nothing yet for the main wheels. I was relying on the pressure gauges to show position indication of the mains, either up or down...another ass-biter coming up.
Lynn