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ALTA Landing gear

Discussion in 'ALTA' started by Cesar Fernandez, Jan 2, 2016.

  1. Cesar Fernandez

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    Has anyone had any issues with the ALTA landing gear legs breaking?
    One of the legs on my landing gear broke yesterday during landing. It was not a hard landing but the drone tilted a bit due to high wind right before touching ground and the leg touched first and broke. I only had the MOVI 5 with a Canon 5D MK3, so it was not excessive weight. The rest of the landing gear, MOVI, Camera and drone were not affected.
    I am going to try to see if I can get that single leg purchased without having to purchase the entire landing gear.
     
  2. Steve Maller

    Steve Maller UAV Grief Counselor

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    One of the things we've always been cautioned about going back to the Constar days was to leave some play in the landing gear legs. I never tighten mine completely, so that in a less-than-graceful landing (it happens all the time) the legs can actually collapse a little. But if you tighten the screws down all the way, the legs (which are longer than they used to be in the new Aero gear) can certainly generate enough force at the joint to break a leg.

    Do you think that's what happened? Can you post a photo of the broken leg?
     
  3. Andy Johnson-Laird

    Andy Johnson-Laird Administrator
    Staff Member

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    Cesar: Sorry to hear about the mishap. If you'd care to upload the Synapse flight log to Dropbox or some equivalent cloud storage -- the file size precludes posting it on the forum -- we can then have a look and see what was going on.

    Check out ALTA FAQs 6 and 7 for information on how to do this, please.

    Andy
     
  4. Cesar Fernandez

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    Hi Steve, that is exactly how it happened. It broke right at the joint. I remember, as I assembled the legs on those joints, I did tight them pretty well and I am sure that might have contributed to it as you mention. For some odd reason, the leg also broke (had circumferential crack in the distal portion of the leg but it did not detached. I did brake it as I applied a little force once I removed it). See picture:
    7V2A0179.jpg
     
  5. Laurence Hamilton-Baillie

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    I believe you can buy 15mm carbon tubing on ebay for about $15 or so. That's what I've been using with no problems so far. I always carry a spare length of tube for moments like this though just in case.
     

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