Buzz From United States of America, joined Nov 1999, 697 posts, RR: 24 Reply 2, posted (7 years 2 months 5 days 12 hours ago) and read 6566 times:
Hi Lehpron, Buzz here. At work we have a couple 3,000 lb jacks that are small enough to fit between the nosewheel tires and engage the jack pad for tire changes. No, you can't lift up the nose by hand. But there isn't a lot of weight on an empty 737's nosewheel tires either. If there's a significant wind outside (above 25 knot gusts for example) I won't do a nosewheel change because the airplane wants to bounce off the jack.
Remember, the 737-200 NLG wheels were even smaller! I guess as long as you don't do a "wheelbarrow" landing it works fine.
I guess i could look at a tire and see what weight it's rated for - what it'll take as an extreme load and divide that by a factor of 3.
On the early Falcon 20’s the nose tires were about 25 percent smaller and wore out real fast, so Dassault came out with a service bulletin to change over to the slightly larger tire and wheel, we used to call them doughnut tires. I believe some modifications had to be done in the nose wheel compartment to accommodate the larger nose wheel assembly. This picture looks like it has the larger nose tire.
Jetlagged From United Kingdom, joined Jan 2005, 2452 posts, RR: 17 Reply 4, posted (7 years 2 months 4 days 19 hours ago) and read 6282 times:
As a rule of thumb, the nosegear takes about 10% of the total aircraft weight. No braking action to absorb, landing impact is much less. Just steering sideforces to consider. So it doesn't have to be that big. It's only there to keep the nose off the ground after all
The glass isn't half empty, or half full, it's twice as big as it needs to be.
EssentialPowr From United States of America, joined Sep 2000, 1820 posts, RR: 2 Reply 5, posted (7 years 2 months 20 hours ago) and read 5950 times:
Quoting Jetlagged (Reply 4): No braking action to absorb, landing impact is much less. Just steering sideforces to consider. So it doesn't have to be that big. It's only there to keep the nose off the ground after all
The 727 was offerred, and delivered to several US operators, with nose gear brakes. A lot of those airplanes ended up at NWA and were former Huges Airwest and Eastern airplanes. NWA deactivated the brakes.
To use automotive terms, the 737 nose gear tires are low profile, large diameter. This means they have low sidewalls, which make the tire stiffer laterally, and are still large diameter, which means the speed limit is in the 190 kt range, depending upon the exact spec of the tire for the model, operator, etc.
The Merlin has some redundancy too, as compared to a BE1900, in that it has a dual nose gear. Ed Swearingen was pretty sharp, and the Merlin/Metroliner were pretty advanced thinking for the day.
HAWK21M From India, joined Jan 2001, 31201 posts, RR: 58 Reply 6, posted (7 years 1 month 4 weeks 1 day 10 hours ago) and read 5860 times:
Quoting Lehpron (Thread starter): Could I position myself under the nose and pick it up?
With one hand just that you'll need to use a Nose Wheel Jack [Bottle jack].
The B731/2 had much smaller Hubs in their nosewheel compared to their later versions.
regds
MEL
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