Making a taildragger of a Kadet Senior

by Dick
(Central Arkansas)

How can I make a taildragger of my Kadet Senior ARF?

Is there a kit already to do so, or must something be fabricated?

I would really like to see some pictures of how any of you have done this. For a trainer of this size, I feel it would be much better that the nose wheel steering.

If you wish,

Dick

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Making a taildragger of a Kadet Senior

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Kadet tail dragger works well.
by: Michael from Oz

G'day

My original Kadet senior is now about 17 years old. It is now on its second fuselage and was converted to a tail dragger some years ago.

The original conversion involved just adding some ply to make a mount but a later version involved removing the original centre wheel mount and replacing it with a piece of quarter inch ply plus some reinforcements. I used an aluminium pre-formed undercarriage which I mounted using quarter inch nylon wing bolts (four) so that any really bad landings would just break the bolts. This feature really helped when it was being used to teach people to land. We broke several sets of bolts but did no other damage.

My version had several different tail wheels from fully steered from a separate servo to simple skids. All worked well even the skid.

I have three kit built Kadets at the moment and also an ARF. All of these are now trikes but I have modified some of them with stronger firewalls as I have found that it is easy to rip the nose wheel out of the standard firewall. My most recent one has a completely new firewall of quarter ply from new. This little mod really helps prevent failure of the nose wheel.

I do find the nose wheel version is easier to take off and land though the tail dragger version was not a difficult plane to handle.

Have fun with your Kadet. I do. I was flying my latest with its Laser 70 (total overkill) yesterday.

Mike in Oz.

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Submitted by: Michael from Oz

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G'day My original Kadet senior is now about 17 years old. It is now on its second fuselage and was converted to a tail dragger some years ago. The original conversion involved just adding some ply to make a mount but a later version involved removing the original centre wheel mount and replacing it with a piece of quarter inch ply plus some reinforcements. I used an aluminium pre-formed undercarriage which I mounted using quarter inch nylon wing bolts (four) so that any really bad landings would just break the bolts. This feature really helped when it was being used to teach people to land. We broke several sets of bolts but did no other damage. My version had several different tail wheels from fully steered from a separate servo to simple skids. All worked well even the skid. I have three kit built Kadets at the moment and also an ARF. All of these are now trikes but I have modified some of them with stronger firewalls as I have found that it is easy to rip the nose wheel out of the standard firewall. My most recent one has a completely new firewall of quarter ply from new. This little mod really helps prevent failure of the nose wheel. I do find the nose wheel version is easier to take off and land though the tail dragger version was not a difficult plane to handle. Have fun with your Kadet. I do. I was flying my latest with its Laser 70 (total overkill) yesterday. Mike in Oz.

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