new TALL gear

By wypaul,
http://www.matcomfg.com/AXLEASSEMBLYA7-idv-2670-1.html I have posted a couple of pictures of my new taller gear in the photos section and have been flying with the new gear for a couple of months now and will discuss the good and the bad.   If you will note in the pictures I have made the gear legs twice as wide at the top using the front mount and the rear most (tri-gear) mount.  This was done so that the attachment point is in a much stronger part of the airframe and it also make the gear leg itself stronger.   The strut is the Robert’s Rage Gear which a friend had for sale for a good price.   Another change that I made is a bolt on axle from Matco. Click on Matco link at the top  This allows me to adjust the camber and caster with only the standard aircraft shim setup.  The shims are available from Matco also.  No more    Now for the places where I got it wrong with this gear.  First the gear legs are at about 60 degrees and they need to be at 45 so the the stress of landing is not transferred as much to the fuselage.  Also the angle between the gear leg and the Rage strut should be about 28 degrees which at the present is not bad but will need to be addressed when the angle of the gear leg is corrected.  This will require a new cabane and the lengthening of the Rage strut.  This strut was made for a S-7 which is a much narrower fuselage.   One other change that I made is to remove the sweep forward in the gear legs which also helped get the aircraft into a better landing attitude in the three point mode although I most often wheel land my plane.  This also makes the tail slightly easier to lift by hand when moving the plane around.   I plan on making changes to correct these defaults this winter but over all this has proven to be a much tougher gear. Due to the added drag I lost 10 mph from 110 to 100 for cruise. I will fair the legs and get some of that back after the corrections are made.   I am open to comments and suggestion so what say you?