Background

For a landing gear to be “good”, it has to fulfill several requirements. First and foremost, the landing gear must be sufficiently stiff to track straight, while also having enough flexibility (and ductility) to absorb shocks from landing and prevent damaging the sensitive balsa frame. Nevertheless, if a crash ocours, it is further important for the landing gear to act as a mechanical fuse and not damage the rest of the airplane. Meanwhile, due to the 2026 Micro ruleset having notable scoring benefits for lightweight aircraft, it is also of key importance to optimize the landing gear for weight.

To achieve these requirements, most modern RC landing gears use bent aluminum for landing gears. However, aluminum is relatively heavy and deforms plastically easily, so experiments were also run with composite materials.