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Walter,

I used the battery and hydraulic system to contour the gear door sliders.  I
guess if you screwed the restrictor valve down far enough you could
micro-manage the gear position.  I didn't.  I found that once the gear was
partially extended it was quite easy to move the legs.  Naturally, one goes
up and the other down.  The only place you really need pressure is in the
fully retracted position.

When Charlie Kohler did the flight test he found that one of the main gear
legs was jamming against the door during retraction.  The air load on the
doors was such that if the gear wasn't in the wells at 90 kias, one or both
of the gear legs would jam against the doors at one of the axle bolts.

Charlie suggested that I add 6 bid carbon fiber to each door for added
stiffness.  There was some improvement but the gear would still occasionally
hang.  In the end I cut a new set of sliders to get the doors further open
at the point where the hanging occurred.  As a result the doors come firmly
into contact with each other during a ground retraction test; however, there
is no evidence that they get anywhere near each other during in-flight
retraction and there has been no further jamming.

Hope this help a little.

Merrill Smith N335DF

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