Cessna nose gear reinforcement

      Hello! This article covers my work on strengthening the nose gear on my Dynam 182 Sky Trainer.

      A great flying plane, it's major drawback is the weakness of the nose-gear. I've only flown this plane twice, and being a beginer I am not that good a landing medium sized models. Both flights I crashed nose down, in a skid, and both times the nose gear busted off: it's really only held on by glue. I'm new to the hobby (sort of, 3 years) so I'm not that well equiped for quick repairs on the field. I wanted to make it less likely for the nose gear to bust of after a poor landing.

     I decided to use a zip tie to tie the nose wheel to the foam shelf it sat under that supported the battery. My inspiration came from the Flite Test guys. I've seen how they used zip ties and I thought I could use it for this.

    The first thing I did was try to get the propeller off. I installed it wrong so the screw-nut sat and held in the propeller. With the propeller stuck I couldn't open the cowl, so I couldn't get to the nose-gear mount. What I did to get it out was that I carved out a ditch around the nut so that I could get a needle-nose plier around it and twist it out. Here in this picture I got the nut almost completely out.

       With the propeller out of the way, I could get to the front of the gear. There there is a single hole. Two holes are at the back. I focused mainly on the front hole since when the plane crashes, the nose gear is pushed back (also the two back holes are glued shut;)) 

        My first step was to poke a hole through the foam (in the hole) so that I could get get the zip tie through; it's not strong enough to punch through itself. My first way of inserting the zip* (for zip tie) was to have the head on the bottom of the nose-gear plate. That positioned the tail to go towards the back of the tray. This proved to much space for the zip* to tie around, so I positioned the head to go above, on the top of the battery cavity. This way I could move the tail to the front of the plane, where the foam is. Poaking a whole through the foam, I shimmied the tail up to the battery cavity.

        From there was the large degree of difficulty in putting the tail through the head in the tiny, tiny battery cavity. I barely got my hand through, but I did it, and I went on to pull the loop tight.

      This is the inside of the battery cavity. Here you can see the zip* head, the screw tight lock that holds in the nose-wheel, and a hole that leads to the motor.

      This picture shows the bottom again, and what the zip* looks like tightened up.

      That's about it! Please leave plenty of comments, about my article structure, writing style, and quality of the build. Any opinions can help me do better in future articles. Thanks for the support!