Legal Eagle Flying Adventures

When building to save weight first thing is to get good, accurate scales that will weight ounces and one that weighs pounds. It is nice to place a part on the scales that weights 4.0 oz, drill holes and lighten until it drops to 2.0 oz or less. Does not sound like much but it all adds up. Heaviest single item is the engine. The wheels, tires, brakes are something where many pounds can be saved, but the smaller, lighter tires only last me about 5 hours, this is an area for some good weight savings.

For those of you that go to Harbor Freight and buy a gas welding set and try to weld up .035 wall 4130, Study the chart  below and check your tip size. Most tips that come with Basic gas welding units are not good for anything below 3/16″ thick material and the difference between the proper size tip and one that is way oversize is extreme.  If tip is to small it is easy to tell, no mater what you do it will not quite melt the metal to allow a weld puddle to form. In this case, the next size larger tip should be about right.  Welding .035 to .035 uses one size tip, welding .035 to .065  uses a different size tip and welding .035 to .090 required an even larger tip.  Using proper size tip and proper gas pressures make a major difference in difficulty when gas welding. 

Complete tailwheel, spring, wheel, all, 1lb 4 oz

Tail wheel considerations. Must be wide enough to not sink in on soft surface, have a rubber tread to stick to hard surface runway, have bearings that allow for speeds we may have it on runway, balance of diameter and weight to meet our requirements. My opinion on the Legal Eagle XL about 4″ diameter works good.