landing gear folding leg

[john firth]

Hello all PIK 20 E owners,

a question.

I have just positioned the repaired landing gear  fork and struts to examine the 

operation;  I had expected that the folding leg would go" over centre, so

that retraction force would assist in holding the down position.

This appears not to be the case; the gear handle has to be in the detent

to hold  the wheel down.

I may be missing something.

Is there anyone familiar with this landing gear who can explain.

regards

John firth Ottawa.

[Vario]

Hi I will help you tomorrow, just let me dig into my notes. I did it some years ago.

Istvan Csonka

On 2025. Aug 23., at 20:44, john firth <johnf...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Varley Ibbo]

The pik20D leg indeed relies on locking by the fascia detention in the cockpit. When locked like this you may observe the frames to be aligned to take the landing forces. The operation is eased by a spring, but mine is 57 years old and a little tired I suspect, because putting the wheel down takes a fair bit of brute force.

At annual inspection it is hard work to check and set the landing gear because it seems that the wheel weight is used to assist operation by gravity. Means the fuz has to be propped upright while you check landing gear operation and maybe adjust/lubricate it.

The landing gear frame bearings in the fuz are somewhat rudimentary and subject to fracture around the fibreglass they are mounted in. There’s no way to get to repair them without cutting holes in the fuz side and re-laminating it all back again.

If having trouble setting a PIK 20d undercarriage linkage then it’s likely your undercarriage leg mounting bearing support is fractured, causing the frame and operating rod to hop about inside the wheel well. Not good.

Annually it’s worth stripping the undercarriage down to inspect the frame bearing points because it’s the only way you can see from the wheel well if you got fractured mountings. Always do this check after a heavy landing. 

Good news is, PIK handbook says land on belly, they made it carbon fibre reinforced. Knackers the undercarriage doors though!

Trawl through attached list to find free to download undercarriage drawings from Traficom Finland.

While thinking on this subject, has anyone sourced or changed an undercarriage mechanism spring? I viewed it , but it’s well embedded in the fuz and looks like hard work to change.