REFLECTOR: Nose Wheel Steering

Steve Goldman steve at fatcatair.com
Thu May 8 13:21:16 CDT 2008


Andrew Ellzey wrote:
> I'm not flying yet, but I would like to ask a question of those that 
> are. I flew a Mooney M20E for 11 years and the nose wheel on my Mooney 
> would try to shimmy on high speed taxi when the nose wheel had too much 
> air in the tire. I always ran about 35 to 40 lbs of air, or just enough 
> that I could see that the tire was squatting just a little with no one 
> on board. I know that my Mooney didn't have the same front wheel 
> configuration as our Velocities have, but it makes sense that an over 
> inflated tire would contribute to the problem if the load was only 
> riding on the center of the tread.
> 

My Tiger acts the same way and I think this is common knowledge for 
Grumman drivers. I tend to run my nose wheel with lower than standard 
presure. Considering how hard it is to inflate the tires on a AA5x 
with wheel pants this is often more laziness than design. I'll admit 
though that based on past discussion here the shimmy problem is more 
pronounced and dangerous in a Velocity as I've ever heard of a nose 
gear collapse in a Grumman from the shimmy.

-- 
Steve Goldman
'77 Tiger N28531
Velocity XL5-RG (T-2773 hrs) N758SG (reserved)
Pittsboro, NC (9NC8)
http://fatcatair.com


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