Hello BCPs, I have a question or two about gear leg mods. I was reading the Alaskan bush wheel site about their HD gear legs. They state that they position the axle 2" forward, and extend the leg 4". I assume the forward axle position is to keep the tail heavier for hard braking? Does adding big tires make it harder to keep the tail down under braking? Or is this just an extra benefit of HD legs?

What is the benefit of longer legs? Doesn't adding big tires increase prop clearance enough? Or is this for greater angle of incidence for three point take offs?

I have never flown the Maule with oleo / A-arm gear. Do these HD gear make them wider? Is that a good or bad thing?

Are these legs or similar available for Pacers?

Thanks.

Forward axels definitely help with putting more weight on the tail. First generation Cessna 180s had the axels more aft and were lighter on the tail. In my experience, bigger tires make your braking less effective. The old diaphragm brakes in the cub worked well enough with 8.00 tires, but you need boosters with 31" bushwheels or you won't even be able to do a run up.

You can never have enough prop clearance And yes, extended gear also buys you better angle of attack for improved landing/takeoff performance. Remember all the nose dragger guys telling you that trikes have better takeoff performance because of higher angles of attack? They're right.

Prop clearance, and angle of attack. Those are the big reasons and yes there are other small changes but IMHO they are pretty insignificant. Heavy braking is still very effective. With the extended gear and 35" tires I can still hit tailwheel first on landing, and also hit the tailwheel when rotating to take off short. Granted it happens much less now, but it is still possible. Taller the gear the better for a Maule anyway IMHO.

UtahMaule pretty much sums it up for the Maule - you could not land it at the point of stall without touching down tail wheel first because the angle of attack was too shallow. Extended gear and Bushwheels go most ways to getting that angle of attack where you want it, what's good for landing slow is also good for takeoff. And yes you can get extended gear for Pacers, not sure who holds the STC's.

Thanks guys. Any downside in having that heavy tail?

With every thing said about the the taller, wider,forward swept gear being all good the only bad side of forward sweep of
the gear is that it moves more mass aft making the plane more apt to ground loop . However, with the large rudder of a cub
and in the control of an experienced tail wheel pilot it is a non issue . The good way out weighs the Bad

Heavy tails are harder to move around on the ground. The tailwheel digs into soft terrain more easily. This is usually not a problem with the baby bushwheel, but it makes a huge difference with the tiny Scott tailwheels. Harder to keep your tailwheel protected on the takeoff or landong roll on rough terrain. Harder to control on off-camber beaches.

When we did the HD Ext gear for the Maule the geometry was kept the same to keep the loads on the fuse the same and not create any different pressure points and thus cause failures in places that would then have different stress loads than originally designed. The 2" forward axle was a benefit and not as much as the cub type with the 3" forward. As for the Pacer there is a couple Ideas we have that would make life a bit ez-er than the Trimmer STC with Cub gear conversion.... Time will tell.