Aircraft Systems

This project was the design of a spring steel landing gear for the tandem tractor gyroplane that I was concurrently developing at the time.  The main landing gear were modified Cessna 140 landing gear legs. I used iterative Finite Element Analysis to tailor the leg spring stiffness to produce the desired deflection at max landing weight and landing descent rates.  I milled the width of the gear legs down to the specific analyzed dimensions. The gear was sized per configuration applicable FAR23 load cases.

This was an experimental composite landing gear trunnion with an integrated oleo strut that I designed and fabricated to test out a new landing gear material and fabrication method.

This was a high frequency jet engine ignition assembly that I designed and built to support some of the jet engine testing that I was doing at the time.  The intent of the design was to make a relatively safe ignition device that would produce a very high voltage, low current, ignition arc with a long duty cycle. I used a 555 timer to feed high frequency chopped DC to a high voltage transformer. The project was a good integrated circuit design learning experience.  The ignition unit worked well, and I used it on several subsequent engine test projects, but it tended to produce significant EMF that interfered with data acquisition and nearby low voltage signal measurements.