Landing Gear Microswitches and testing – January 2018

Here are some pictures of when we worked on the landing gear microswitches.  When you tell the gear to go up, you turn on a switch that applies power to the linear actuators.  The actuators need to stop without you turning the power off.  They stop because the gear hits a limit switch that is connected to an electrical relay that cuts the power to the linear actuator.  The same thing happens when the gear goes down, limit microswitches.

Here’s a picture of one of the $24 mounting plates that we bought.  The microswitch can be mounted to the plate and then it is easier to move the microswitch to get it in the right position.  We made some extra mounting plates out of aluminum stock.

Limit switch mounted on the plate

 

Limit switch mounted on the bulkhead

Lower limit switch

Ethan made a test wiring harness for the gear out of automotive wire.  We’ll redo it with aviation wire later.

Here’s our test gear control setup.  3 blue LED’s for water, 3 amber LED’s for land

Here’s our gear testing video