I am looking at a Champ (has oleo landing gear) and I'm getting conflicting stories. What are the handling characteristics of such a plane when landing? One person tells me they are very bouncy and he would avoid owning one..and a couple other people tell me they land as "smooth as butter". Any thoughts from the group?

Thanks,
Chris

Chris, whoever told you that a Champ with oleo gear is bouncy has never flown one! That's awesome gear!!
JH

I got my tailwheel endorsement in a champ with Oleo gear and it was very forgiving. If you do a three point landing it'll stick right to the ground. I suspect I got away with alot while I was learning because of that gear that I wouldn't have got away with in something with spring gear.

Chris,

Ditto on the Oleo gear.

Note that a lot of folks refer to Citabrias as "Champs". It's possible that the person or persons saying that the gear is difficult is actually refering to a spring steel gear.

Or, maybe they'd never flown a little old tailwheel airplane before.

MTV

One person tells me they are very bouncy and he would avoid owning one..and a couple other people tell me they land as "smooth as butter"

Sounds like the majority likes them! I have flown a SuperCub(Oleo) and a Decathlon(Spring steel) back to back and really I did not notice the characteristics of the gear because I was so focused on trying to make smooooth landings. A bounce is a bounce, but a bounce seems way more scary in a taildragger for some reason.

I do think that spring steel gear are less headache maintenance-wise. Don;t you have to maintain the bungees/shock periodically in an oleo strut?

there are springs in the olio's, all one needs to do is keep the fliud up.

I have owned a citabria with olio gear, they are fantastic, they do not bounce, if they do you would have really bounced a spring steel gear.

My stinson has them now, very docile. I love this type of gear and count it as a strong positive when looking at a plane to fly/buy.

Dane

Zane,

For the record, Super Cubs have bungee gear, not oleo gear. Pretty different animals, but both pretty gentle, nonetheless.

MTV

mtv wrote:Zane,

For the record, Super Cubs have bungee gear, not oleo gear. Pretty different animals, but both pretty gentle, nonetheless.

MTV

Ahhh..I thought the "oleo" part simply referred to the use of a shock absorber device located between the gear legs, but I gather it actually means the use of an oleo strut/shock, which has air and fluid?

zane wrote:[Ahhh..I thought the "oleo" part simply referred to the use of a shock absorber device located between the gear legs, but I gather it actually means the use of an oleo strut/shock, which has air and fluid?

Actually the true oleo gear has no air charge.... such as the Champ and Stinson gear. All there is there is a spring and fluid dampening device.... really simple gear and very low maintenance. Sometimes you need to replace some seals or oil, but pretty seldom if taken care of at all. Very forgiving gear!
JH

Just had my oleos overhauled. Smooth as a cold stick of butter.

zane wrote:Sounds like the majority likes them! I have flown a SuperCub(Oleo) and a Decathlon(Spring steel) back to back and really I did not notice the characteristics of the gear because I was so focused on trying to make smooooth landings.

I hope this was another one of those "tongue-in-cheek" statements. Almost fell out of my spring gear office chair when I read that one.

Bouncing in a tri-gear is a lot more scary than a tailwheel. Bouncing a tri-gear is more likely to result in a wheel barrow with an over stressed and fully compressed nosewheel with the prop only inches away from disaster. In a bounce, a lot of throttle does wonders for recovery.

OLEO's dampen, they are a shock like on your car. They reduce the bounce by the resistance required to pump a fluid through an orifice. Again just like your car. Springs are just that, little or no dampning. The suspension portion of an OLEO can be either a compressed gas or spring. OLEO's do require maintenance every now and again. Springs shouldn't.
Spring gear are sometimes more rugged than OLEO's. They are sometimes heavier too.

Thanks everyone! Maybe there is a Champ in my future .

Chris

Supercubber wrote:I hope this was another one of those "tongue-in-cheek" statements. Almost fell out of my spring gear office chair when I read that one.

By now you should know that I am totally full of shit about everything, even the stuff I thought I knew. BTW, my office chair has a oil dampened strut.

Bouncing in a tri-gear is a lot more scary than a tailwheel. Bouncing a tri-gear is more likely to result in a wheel barrow with an over stressed and fully compressed nosewheel with the prop only inches away from disaster. In a bounce, a lot of throttle does wonders for recovery.

I've bounced the tricycle plenty, but I've never felt like I was going to wheelbarrow. For a less experienced tailwheel pilot like myself, the combination of bouncing AND trying to not groundloop can overwhelm the nerves. Whenever I fly a tailwheel aircraft, I feel like I'm out there on the edge, the same feeling I used to get when I just jumped something big on my dirt bike.

The little bit of time I have in oleo & bungee gear airplanes leads me to believe they are more forgiving than Cessna spring gear. A guy I know always sez his old 170 had Boeing gear, as in "boing,boing,boing". Sometimes I resemble that remark......

Eric

Zero-one-victor, I think you were led to beleive correctly. My Super Cub is a kitten to land, but I am a little like Zane, when on hard surface with the 185, the spring gear can be a handfull. I wish there was a way to calm it down. Maybe amphibs are the answer.

steve wrote: Maybe amphibs are the answer.

It's tough when the answer costs $30,000.
Do amphib gear have any shock absorption system?

Actually that would be a bargain. the cost of setting up a 185 with a set of new amphibs will choke a horse. I mentioned the amphibs in jest, though that is a far away dream. The Super Cub was on Wip amphibs when I first bought it and it did seem to be a comfortable landing, but I only flew it when it was it was in Washington and I never pushed it too hard. The floats are off now and sitting at Wip in MN ready to go back on full time next spring. I really do not know what sort of suspension the amphib wheel system has, but I bet Mike V can answer that question.

The nose gears on all Wip amphibs (and almost every manufacturer of amphibs has now "borrowed" Wip's nose gear design) is a flat spring made from some sort of composite material. The flat spring is retracted into a slot in the float nose. A simple, effective and pretty much bullet proof system.

The older Wip floats used Oleo struts for the mains. Not sure about the newest little floats. Many if not most amphibs used oleos as well, but a few have used a stack of rubber biscuits instead of the oleos. The old Bristol floats used rubber biscuits, and they worked just fine, and never went flat on you. Oleos will occasionally let you down a bit--so to speak. Not a disaster, just a pain.

MTV

To get back to the original question...

I fly a 7EC Champ with what Aeronca (mine's a Champion) originally called the "No-Bounce" gear. They're like the standard gear but have a longer stroke and are nearly fully compressed when the aircraft is on the ground.

They can stand a very hard landing. In fact, my preferred three-point landing is to pound it onto the ground pretty solidly. If you grease it on, the oleos tend to compress slowly as the weight comes off the wings. They also do so asymmetrically, making it feel as though the wind is lifting one wing. It's weird. It no longer surprises me but it still bugs me.

Wheel landings with these is a no-brainer. You can drive it on with power, or come in in a near-three-point attitude then roll it up onto the mains.

Somewhere in between "greaser" and "wham" is a zone where you *can* bounce a touchdown. It's usually caused by too much speed and not having the stick fully back before the wheels touch.

If you (or I) tried to land a Cub, Cessna or Citabria the way I land the Champ, you'd either bounce or break something. Short-field landings are a breeze, cause the thing sticks to the ground and you can get on the brakes. Champs have heavy tails, too, so they stay on the ground with anything short of maximum braking (and you need really good brakes to lift the tail). With a passenger, it would be very, very hard to nose one over. Not impossible, but you'd have to be asleep at the stick, I think.

Jon B.