I wanted to land on all this white fluffy stuff that we
have around here in Scandinavia, so I made a pair of very
simple skis for my bird. They are made of one layer 3 mm
balsa between two layers of 0,8 mm plywood. No rounded edges
or any fancy stuff like that. The size is 50 x 360 mm for
each ski.
(For you imperial people: 1 in = 25,4 mm.)
I placed the skis so half of the ski is in front of the main
shaft, and half behind the shaft. This makes sure that the
hole ski is loaded equally when the bird sits on the snow.
I guess I could have made the skis a little bit smaller, but
it is better to make them to big than arrive at the field,
assemble the bird, but it down on the snow - and whoops -
they where to small...
They didn’t effect the hover or FF characteristics at
all.
The last picture shows how I mounted the skis to the landing
gear. There is actually nothing that stops them from rotating
around the landing skid, except for Gods will... But that was
not a problem. I did a few bad landings, slipping side ways
but I hade no problems with the skis rotating on the skid.
(I haven’t painted the skis yet, I wanted to see if
they worked first.)
