| I got a partially finished set of landing gear from Chris Trice (see picture). All the difficult bits which had to be turned on a lathe, or machined, were already done. The rest would be quite straightforward, with the basic tools I have. |
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| Holes were drilled in the corners of the brass plate for the 1/8” tube. I cut some brass box section to keep the H shaped piece the correct distance from the plate, then clamped it in place. The ends of the tubes were crimped and bent to the correct angle, then soldered in place. The H shaped piece was silver soldered together, so I didn’t have to worry about it coming apart when soldering the rest of the gear with ordinary tin lead alloy. |
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| Next I had to cut down the small solid bit of brass that the channel bolts to. This was then soldered in place. |
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| The feet were made from brass plate, strip and channel. The channel is the same as used on my eagle 1, but this time I got a friend of mine to reduce the wall thickness on his milling machine. The feet were clamped and soldered together. I found the best way of cleaning up the solder was with a very sharp wood chisel, and then wet and dry paper. |
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| To connect the feet to the steel legs, I soldered T sections from 3/16” tube. These were attached to the feet with threaded rod and nuts. I rounded the nuts off with a file. The T sections were then glued into the steel legs with epoxy, and the rest of the landing gear bolted together. |
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The footpads were made from 6mm acrylic. I found the best way of working with this was to first rub the surface down with fine wet and dry, so that it was easier to see any marking out. I cut the basic shape using a carpenters tenon saw. The four corner pieces were cut out with a hacksaw. To make the 45-degree angles, I used a grinding bit in my drill. This removed most of the material, I then finished off all the edges with various files. |
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| The footpads on the original eagle 1 were ¼” thick and then replaced with 5/16” pads for season 2. I decided to make mine ¼”. In the picture opposite you can see that the pads on my first eagle are too thin, even for season 1, they are in fact only 3/16” thick. |
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| The “toes” on the original models were vinyl stickers from a Sasco Year Planner. I made mine from thin styrene sheet, superglued in place. |
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| The number of toes changed after season 1, as well as the thickness of the footpads. The pictures opposite show what the original feet of eagle 1 should look like and feet of eagle 2. I made mine in the style of eagle 2, not only the number of toes, but also the angle and length of the brass strips. |
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