Dynamic King Suspension on My Wingless Airplane | Scrappy #52

hey guys on this video i'm super excited we're gonna learn what my three secret switches are what happens with my landing gear we got a lot to do let's get to work it's physics math and engineering machine it draft it build it test it break it every time something new gets built the entire world advances laying in bed at night it's designing new parts designing new suspension designing new wings [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] okay guys i've been holding back for a long time i made the first fully dynamic controllable suspension front back right left i can literally readjust everything about the suspension on my garmin screen at one touch of a button i can go into takeoff mode safe taxi mode we can adjust everything for hard suspension soft suspension crosswind no crosswind when i hit takeoff mode i simply drop the tail flat lift the nose high and i get the highest angle of attack this aircraft can achieve for max performance takeoff so much of what i'm doing here it's not really practical not a lot of people would ever use it but i hope that kind of pushing the envelope a little bit might help advance us somewhere and even if someone uses it i'm going to get excited it's freaking exciting i'll tell you a little story and it just made my day um i had this tail assembly working in the in the other hangar and my buddy steve stopped by and a lot of you know him one of the flying cowboys steve henry just i love you steve one of the coolest guys that has made one of the coolest hot rod rocket ship aircraft and i remember the day he came in and i showed these silly secrets to my buddies and the first time i hit the air ride and i dropped the tail down and lifted the front for angle of attack it was awesome to just see him light up [Music] we talked and then later he he text back and forth and and i went through the process how i was able to do it without a pumps how the system works and he created his own system and he's got it on the tail which is perfect for him steve thank you for doing that also thank you for keeping our little secret um man i took that as the greatest compliment if any of you think that this plane is going to be able to beat steve i think again i've watched some of those takeoffs this bird's a bit different i'm just going to be really blunt there'll be areas that this is going to do really really well but i tell you what um his plane and engine combo weigh the same as just the motor his entire plane uh the only way i think i could get my horsepower to wait to pair up with that plane is that i have to throw all my nitrous at it which is something i'm just not going to do so steve hold on to that for a while there may be a day i do an all-electric 800 horsepower plane and we'll we'll go for the lightweight for right now my touring suburban there's another feature that i really wanted on this aircraft and that's safe taxi mode we have seen a lot of people literally drive into the back of other aircraft cut them up we've had fatalities it's something that's been going on ever since tail drivers came out visibility's really low over the front of the plane so you s curve down a runway and i thought you know what why can't we make our suspension dynamic enough give it enough range of motion that with the touch of a button i can hit safe taxi mode and the front of the plane will drop and the back will lift and i can look over to the asphalt just like i was in a tricycle gear aircraft one of the nice features that that mode has is it allows me to come in and land if it's a bit gusty drop it down and the second it hits go safe taxi lockout and drop the name down tail up lose the angle of attack and not need to get a wing walker to come help me get my plane in on a windy day if for some reason the wind really got picked up and i didn't dare turn off the runway because of the crosswind i could add another level of safety and just hit five degree right lane or left lean so that the wing itself tips into the wind and the plane is still flat squatted and zero angled attacks the other thing i wanted out of the suspension was the ability to change dynamically the amount of pressure and how much travel i limit to it on 20 inches of travel there's a lot of risk with that much travel and that's if you set the suspension soft enough to use it it's going to be fantastic for just really rugged ruts and dips or surprises and some tall grass that you couldn't see the downside is if it's crosswind you can really get that plane leaning or it can pick up one edge and so that range of motion can be problematic so i don't want to have to decide on the ground and change all my air pressures i just want to look at my dash and hit a button we can adjust everything for hard suspension soft suspension crosswind no crosswind the way we tied in the air ride is it goes to each system king thank you king you guys are awesome um they didn't have a system specifically for what i wanted i can't have the air just do a normal system the way an air ride works on air shocks because as air goes in typically you just fill it up with a pressure bottle or nitrogen and then you cap it and leave it but if i'm letting air in and out regularly to continually adjust for my terrain i would literally push oil back through the system so what's great is i worked with king and we added a second device inside to separate the oil chamber from the air chamber so that this can run indefinitely up and down and not mix the air with the oil and i still have full damping control full adjustability uh valving uh the shim spacer adjustment in it for rebound and compressions i have all the functions of king with a fully air ride integrated to the new valving system i created what's really cool if you look up inside the panel here and you come this way um quick shout out to garmin they really made it cool and easy for me to be able to adjust and tie in all the electric circuitry to my garment panel a little bit of interface a little bit of programming all that i could just do myself and i was able to tie into the screen the sensors that relate to my gear both in pressure and potentiometers for position and now between the two of these guys helping me out allowing me to manipulate and work things i can fully control electronically from my panel what's going on with my king suspension and not intermix oil and air there's air compressor systems for vehicles they're for air ride control they absolutely can't work on scrappy i actually bought a set and i wanted to just dive into their circuitry and wiring and pin it out and see how they operate and then took their valving regulators put them on a test bench and i pressurized them both inbound outbound compression pops to them and then i tested how far they can go their air systems say they're rated to about 200 psi of pressure they actually did better than that i was able to test them to over 325 pounds of pressure before i got them to fail however i need more than 200 pounds on scrappy to manipulate it the way i want to know i need to be almost double that and some most ride configurations i'll be not about four to five hundred pounds and if i'm riding really soft for really long travel 375 range but if i had a really hard suspension i want that system to be able to handle a spike as high as a thousand psi so i've designed the valving to work with that and i couldn't use any automotive valve i also couldn't use any automotive pressurized pump two reasons i can't use a pump to get a pump big enough to hit the psi i need the pump would weigh about 150 pounds even a small pump is about 40 pounds but won't reach the pressure but there's a much bigger problem to using a pump on board an aircraft if i pressurize air it takes in ambient air from outside which has a humidity level at a compression level it will drop out the water into the tank which is why your air compressors when you spin off the bottom of the tank it always dumps water [Music] now that might be fine in automobile with the guys that are running air ride in their cars but it certainly is not okay in an aircraft it can suck in air at 70 degrees go to 25 000 feet it's 50 below zero now and that water that's been pulled into all the valving freezes and shatters the valves all right guys since i don't have an air compressor on board how do i get the shocks to work well it's real simple they run off nitrogen there's actually two tanks on board there's an oxygen tank and a nitrogen tank that's actually not how i originally had it if you came into the shop months ago or during the whole build and testing process i went ahead and took those tanks and i just went ahead and split the separated isolated systems i combined them and then i was able to use the oxygen since i have a big six tank oxygen refill station of my own here it made it easy to do all the testing cycles gears even driving around the airport running oxygen pressurized tank on my gear and i wanted to keep it that way and i tried to talk myself into just leaving it pure oxygen running my gear and a separate pressurized system or isolation step down regulators to each to run my breathing for my pulse on demand for high level flying but ultimately there's risk to run pure oxygen and i elected to go as two separate tanks one tank oxygen one take nitrogen and it's really simple reason for that and i won't dive into a lot of details but it's basically this oxygen at high enough pressure combined with a heat source combined with a fuel source can combust just like your diesel engine can run without a spark plug it uses a glow plug to get it started and once it's running the glow plug turns off it can stay running it doesn't even have a spark diesel engines have high compression combined with a fuel source combined with the heat source you can get a combustion event and then we can blow the tops off my socks and i don't want to wreck my shocks because i love my king shocks so that was the ultimate deciding factor to go ahead and just keep it nitrogen and oxygen and not share the systems i wanted to share the systems because i wanted to be able to breathe coast to coast multiple trips do i actually think i could create enough heat or combine the events to get the shocks to have a problem running off oxygen i don't know that i actually could but if it's possible why take the risk six sets of valves in one bank three on another and then a whole series of relays and wiring to tie it all together very simple logic open closed circuit stuff nothing complex then tie all that into the gear system and garmin and then program their heights pressures and dial the potentiometers and then color code those positions so every one of the gear i know where they are it's really a simple system it sounds complex and since there are added areas that you could have a leak like a valve or a hose i added a redundancy backup which is simply this right behind this line it goes to a series of lockout valves mechanical so that there's nothing that could fail on it and if for some reason i saw the pressure bleeding down on one of the gear and my light also comes up and says your left gear pressure has dropped 200 psi or 50 psi relation to another 100 psi and i didn't do it well no big deal it means i got a slow slow slow leak i reset that gear to the pressure i want turn the lockout valves i isolate the entire electronic system and now i have a traditional landing aircraft finish my trip finish my flight shoot i could leave it for months if i wanted it's just now conventional but even with a leak i could always open the valves make a quick adjustments re-lock them out and isolate the entire automation system out of scrappy so one of the other features i wanted to talk about and i'll show you the tail right here oh my gosh when i did the testing i was so excited not only just the drop testing where i dropped it from like 12 feet but the actual ride testing so the gear actually still has its conventional leaf springs on the back but then it also has almost 13 inches of travel what's really awesome is i programmed the potentiometer tied right inside there to the garmin screen and it tells me when my tire assembly pivot is angled or leveled to the ground and those of you who have messed with this know why this is so important i when you set up a cub's tail wheel assembly you want it level because if it's off angle one way or another the tire likes to shimmy and shake and so you constantly try to find the happy spot and why i say happy spot it's never perfect because you may have one person in your cub one day and then two people full fuel and 400 pounds of camping gear the next day and one time your tail will never shakes and the next time it's all over the place while doing the tail wheel suspension i simply set it up so i can hit level the tail and it puts the travel about three quarters of the way down about 60 percent down in its position and sets the tail wheel to level and has an indication line tail wheel level what's really great is i can load up people throw fuel in and reset it so that the tail wheel is always tracking straight but what really got my attention is out here in the dirt we have a a grass strip it's actually not an improved or or designated grass strip but our airport allows us to just land in this tundra between the taxiway and the runway so it's got cobble and rock and ruts and bumps and so whenever we land in that we usually land and pop the tail up because you know you're gonna just start smacking and bouncing the back of the plane i took it out there for the first test and i cannot believe how soft and having 13 inches of travel plus the original leaf i mean i just whipped down it left the tail down and was commenting he could see that thing moving six and eight inches up and down and my horizontal just stayed steady as can be and in the plane i felt like i was just rolling down the runway i'm i'm blown away i couldn't be happier so sometimes it just works out but that's the tail wheel and how i can see and change its position [Music] one of the other things that i'm really hoping makes aviation a little safer even when the plane isn't flying by preventing the number of high angle of attack tailwheel aircraft that are getting destroyed on a ramp when no one's around we've all seen it happen and if you haven't get online and look they're everywhere matter of fact a few years back we had a giant windstorm go through sun and fun and it picked up tailwheel aircraft high angle of attack lightweight that were anchored and because they're tipped to the wind it pulled their stakes out of the ground and flipped them across the airport and landed on top of jets it's absolutely destructive it's not just at the air shows it happens in the back country there's been times where there was a storm coming we couldn't get out the winds were so severe that we all got out shovels and dug big holes under our front tires to try and drop the nose into the sand and the most you can drop it is about that far so on scrappy i can drop the front 20 lift the back and put it in safe tie-down mode a lot of you asked a lot of time if i bottom out the suspension with the prop clear 20 inches of travel full down i have more clearance than my race plane does at full up i think i'm good the other thing that safe tie down mode does is it takes this step down to here so it's also my get out of the plane easy mode so as i'm taxing taxiing in it's in safe taxi leave it in that same position park it lock it down the plane doesn't want to fly away it's just like any other tricycle gear aircraft no angle of attack to the wind here's what scrappy looks like in safe taxi mode tails up fronts down gears suspension is locked out so it can't rock a wing i'm safe i'm stable i'm locked down this is also the easy get in out mode and the tie down mode this is where we tie it down but it's been really nice working on the plane it's my work on the plane mode if i'm working on top of the engine but way under here i literally can walk up and work on the underside if i raise it 20 inches so it's been really convenient all right so when i go on the side hill mode there's a ridge over here it's called tip over ridge it's really a steep sloped hill it's not severely steep but a lot of times you land and it wants to roll you off and you just do a go around and you got to really stay into it to kind of stay on the hill there's nowhere to land that's just perfectly flat so i can set the side hill mode but it's more than just landing and be able to come in and land flat and stay flat on tip over ridge but there's a lot of times where out is like a gaggle of aircraft and we'll all land on these hills and then we get up on the top and everyone's trying to park and one or two people are leaning so far that all the fuel's draining out of their wing so i kind of wanted to be able to take the side hill position and hit a button and just level it and get my wings and my fuel to stay perfectly balanced and nothing draining out of the wing so it's really fun i took it out and just playing with this going all the way up and that all the way down how steep of a hill it can sit on and stay level just for the heck of it while i was out on the asphalt i just leaned it like that and started doing donuts and man this wide stance lean frame is really stable so it'll be fun to kind of get out do some slow taxi on some slopes go to some of our favorite places see how much more comfortable i feel being able to level the plane up and also if you watch the way the gear moves with the different positions when i go into side hill mode the tires aren't leaning and bowing they actually will stay true so that the tires are straight down and they're not trying to beat off the rims and so as part of the geometry was to be able to come in and land off camber and have the wheels track straight and not roll which wants to push you oh my gosh guys i am so excited to finally get to put out this video i hope you liked it i was waiting so long to kind of button everything up i wanted every component finished so this has been a dream of mine since before i started building scrappy i wanted fully dynamic fully controllable adjustable aircraft i wanted safe taxi mode i wanted side hill mode i wanted heavy wind control mode i want it to change high suspension low suspension tight suspension soft suspension and even old man mode which is when i drop all of it at the same time third of the floor so when i'm out there with a with a walker coming out to scrappy i can get in the thing and fly it around lift it up and take off thank you so much for being patient so many of you guys made comments along the way and they just cracked me up you guys are so good and so many of you figured out bits and pieces along the way it was so hard to wait but i needed to have everything done i wanted potentiometers in i wanted my pressure sensors in i wanted my lockout safety modes in i wanted to have the color codes done for every angle of lean if i wanted a five degree left lean i wanted the pressures all set up and color coded for all the different positions i could set scrappy up and i wanted to have tried it and tested it and made sure it worked and so it's official the crazy gear is done i hope you guys liked it i love your comments my wife reads them to me and i'll try and get back to you and put it in a video but i love reading those comments it just makes me laugh as i sit here working on scrappy and you guys i have something really cool i've been holding out on the wings the gears out of the way you guys know all the secrets but the wings i am pumped they are going to manipulate they are controllable they can change from high speed to low speed and i can't wait to show you the hardest part of scrappy is yet to come if you haven't already and you like this silly content like it subscribe to it but more importantly share it with others and if there's any of you who are making videos keep making those videos i'm getting comments i'm sure you are we're getting more people into aviation i get hundreds of comments and everyone else i'm sure about new pilots that are getting their license because they're watching silly stuff like this and all of you so keep doing it but it all of you that are watching that don't make videos do us a favor all of us silly youtubers share everyone's content with everyone else and let's get more people into aviation you guys know the drill i love you guys i'm getting backwards [Music] go ahead and record let's get some of this okay you can have it roll on there okay it can't electrocute you you can put it together and touch it yourself [Laughter] electricity now touch them together

Channel: Mike Patey

Views: 234,175

Keywords: Air racing, turbulence, Draco, wilga, mike patey, STOL aircraft, Bush Flying, Flying Cowboys, Mark Patey, Mike Patey, Pylon Racing, Patey Twins, Fastest Turbo Prop, Turbine Lancair, Turbine Legacy, Hillside Landing, Crosswind Landings, Water Landings, Water ski airplane, Best tugs, Grip lock ties, Back to work, Carbon Fiber Molds, Carbon fiber layout, how to carbon fiber, custom parts, world record aircraft, experimental, super cub, engineering, how it's made

Id: Ogj_F8sCjIE

Length: 25min 7sec (1507 seconds)

Published: Sat May 29 2021