Thorp Air Command - T18.net

It took a little over 4 months, but I finally got my Trusty Tailwheel Spring from Langair Machining. They had their bending machine out for a while, and with the "one of" order, it just took a long time. I got it installed on Tuesday, along with a "Homebuilders Tailwheel". What a difference. With the large pneumatic Maule tailwheel, there was a pretty serious shimmy problem. I had tried different size springs, pumping the tire pressure up to 70 psi, along with all of the other "fixes", and managed to reduce the shimmy problem quite a bit from when I originally flew the airplane. Even then I still had to wheel land the airplane, gently lower the tailwheel to the ground, if it shimmied raise the tail back off the ground, and continue this until the shimmy finally stopped, or I didn't have airspeed left to raise the tail again. There was nothing that I could find mechanically wrong with the spring or Maule tailwheel assembly, it just seems to be an inherent problem with that particular assembly on an airplane of the Thorp's size and tailwheel weight. Now I can actually 3-point the airplane, and the tailwheel just rolls straight. Most of the folks I have talked to who have had the pneumatic Maul tailwheel on homebuilts have also had shimmy problems, so I don't think trying to continue and solve the shimmy problem with the Maule tailwheel would have been worthwhile. Many thanks to Bill Williams, who made the main spring attachment bracket and gave it to me. With that in hand, the installation was very simple and straightforward, and took less then an hour. There was some additional time spent in drilling the 2 holes in the spring and in painting it, but the whole process was easy. If anybody wants a Maule tailwheel assembly with spring, you can have it for free.