Jump to content

Landing gear hoses


Recommended Posts

Forgive me, Sir: "Landing Gear Hoses"? Does this mean the hydraulic lines and connectors on the gear legs themselves or the spaghetti explosion in the gear bays of (modern) aircraft, and so-on?

If so, it really depends on period and scale. My own preference is for lead detailing wire (0.2, 0.3 and 0.5mm for 1/72 to 1/48 scale) -this is very flexible, easy to attach with a tiny blob of superglue, and can be left mostly unpainted. Connectors, junctions, etc can be fashioned from short lengths of brass tube or plastic rod. This is great for the actual gear legs too.

All the above are in this much 'improved'(?) Revell 1/48 EF2000 nose gear bay:

NGB+3.JPG

It looked like this out of the box:

Gear+Bays+OOB.JPG

Where you need to represent the ribbed type of hose, I recommend annealed wire-wound guitar strings. Unfortunately (unless you have a very small guitar!) these are probably too big for anything under 1/48 -even then, only the 3rd string is likely to be useful and if you anneal it too much you will cremate the thin string inside the wire so it snaps when you try to bend it!

Replicating the sexy Goodrich Aeroquip-style braided stuff in smaller scales is still a mystery to me; model car detailing materials are way too big and I think there's a gap in the market here!

HTH.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 months later...

telephone wire works well for these lines/hoses too...

the small e string from an electric guitar...

solder (as stated)...

and carbon steel welding wire works well too... a 2lb roll will last longer than a lifetime

not gear, but heres the idea

1:32 F4U engine

Picture003.jpg

Picture002.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

Just my opinion and YMMV etc., but I never use superglue on lead or solder. Over time the acid in the superglue causes a reaction, I ended up with what looked like white fungus as the lead or solder crystallized, and then it all fell off. Granted, it took over a year to start crystallizing/corroding, but once it started there was no undoing it. I have switched to two-part epoxy, and while it takes longer to set than superglue, it doesn't eat lead or solder.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...