F-18 gear doors

[Ken]

Just viewed this neat Blue Angel video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=W6tB8Lf7YoU

Question: in the opening shots of the belly and landing gear, the edges of the gear doors appear to be uneven, chewed up and touched up. What's going on there?

Ken

[The Inspector]

Quite probably FOD thrown up by those two smaller round rubber thingys that keep the nose from scraping the ground, just because you sweep the runway don't make it clean

[m50a1ontos]

Yup....lots of cr@p hits the leading edges and takes small chunks out. Epoxy patch is an airframers best friend!

[Ken]

I see your point, but more specifically I was looking at the triangular chewed up areas on the main gear doors. They almost mirror each other, except the cut areas are not identical and the edges are ragged.

I did some online searching for F-18 landing gear photos and see that there is a brace or piston on the gear near the area in question. I'll take a guess and say that these doors on a Blue jet are subjected to much more irregular airflow and G (when open) than a grey jet - I bet they bang against the adjacent piece of gear structure.

Someone with F-18 experience could probably speak to this one in a flash.

[m50a1ontos]

I see your point, but more specifically I was looking at the triangular chewed up areas on the main gear doors. They almost mirror each other, except the cut areas are not identical and the edges are ragged.

I did some online searching for F-18 landing gear photos and see that there is a brace or piston on the gear near the area in question. I'll take a guess and say that these doors on a Blue jet are subjected to much more irregular airflow and G (when open) than a grey jet - I bet they bang against the adjacent piece of gear structure.

Someone with F-18 experience could probably speak to this one in a flash.

Yup!

Also, the Blues fly older A models and they beat the snot out of them (most "A's" already had the snot wrung out before they got to the Blues!). Heavy G's will cause the gear to bang against the doors (IIRC, been a while since I wrenched on one). Doors are also unique to each aircraft....they'll all fit (new doors fresh fromm the manufacturer) but often lots of tweaking is required to make 'em fit right and often, swapping one door to another A/C (cannabalizing) won't work as that door was "fitted" already. A least that was my experiance. You tend to keep patching things up until you can't anymore. A model doors might be kinda hard to find now as everything is C/D or E/F/G now.....and no, they're not all the same!

[Tailspin Turtle]

Long discussion here with pictures and a diagram:

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/ind ... pic=195727

[MX304]

Last year at Reno during the practice show one got it's gear door "adjusted" by the wing tip of another.