Looking at a recent picture of a C5 in a turn
while taxiing it appears that the four wheel
nosegear assembly is ‘split’ in its operation
with one set of two wheels turning at a different angle than the two on the other side


I think we have a C5 expert on this forum,
curious to know

It may appear that way, but it works just like any other nose gear, just four tires. God, the gear was complicated enough without adding to it.

GF

you can try this
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44564932?s ... b_contents
and say to us is it true

Is that question to me?

GF

I bought a copy of the SAE paper. It indicates that the nose gear just rotates as a unit. However, the aft main gear bogies also steer, at 1/3 of the nose gear angle.

aft main steer you can see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99cm_5vZjK4

As the experts have already noted above, I don't see any articulation point in the assembly


Tugg

Gee, I wonder what happened there??

GF

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Gee, I wonder what happened there??

GF

Dunno. Only one of the tires is blown. Whether or not it caused or was caused by the sudden departure from the airframe...

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Is that question to me?

GF

It is !

Armadillo1 wrote:

aft main steer you can see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99cm_5vZjK4

That’s an amazing video

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Gee, I wonder what happened there??

GF

Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing !

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

Gee, I wonder what happened there??

GF

I wanted to post the same picture yesterday to reply to the OP's question but did not manage to do it. Here is what happened: https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/74420

Here is another picture:


O/T: when searching for "C5 nose landing gear" I found a lot of pictures of C5's landing without retracted NLG. I witnessed such a landing in Frankfurt in the middle of the 80ies. Happened quit often and it seems it was a weak point of the C5's design. I think we had a thread about it; IIRC.

I noticed that the fast spinning main wheels were first stopped (in flight braking) before turned to fit into landing gear bays ?
No brakes at the nose gear ? Are they stopped after T/O with brake pads, like the 747.

No brakes, just the pads. Yes, there were occasionally unbalanced wheel assemblies.

I must have missed that safety meeting. That would an impressive take-off.

The joke on the A models was everytime you reached for the gear handle, it was a career move. The B gear which didn’t have crosswind function was much more reliable. By the late ‘90s all the As had been converted to B gear.

GF

The crash report on the C-5 at Travis above said the cause was improper nitrogen servicing before flight. Interesting that it could be so overfilled that it could blow the strut like a pipe bomb. I wonder how much of a structural function the nitrogen plays, but the engineers who could answer that are probably gone by now...

Great video. I liked seeing the steer function on the aft MLG, and then the retract procedure: rotate the truck 90 deg, rotate the gear in, and then pivot the truck flat. Nice piece of engineering.

I knew the guy who over serviced the NLG strut. It was no fault of the Travis guys, it was a Dover flying crew chief. He gave the nitrogen charge all the pressure the nitrogen cart had, I guess thinking more is better. I won't go into this guys original career field, but I'll say he was not very good in it either. In a brilliant move, this guy told the investigators that he only did as he had been shown at Dover, so they lowered the boom on everybody else doing the right thing in Dover. So it was our fault back at home station! Some flying crew chiefs did ok, but some others were loose cannons that never had much oversight or the threat of Quality Assurance walking up on them and going through the wringer. Sorry to make this a FCC bash, but some FCCs I knew could only follow a refuelling checklist, but not follow tech data for much else. That plane was in depot for a very long time getting put back together. Lucky people didn't die that day.

The pictures of the plane don't look so bad, then reading your discover that engine 2 was destroyed, and 3 out of 4 hydraulic circuits taken out, yikes !

Not to doubt the article and I didn’t the AF report, I’m baffled at how they lost 3 hydraulic systems with NLG explosion. The gear are entirely 1 & 4; 2 & 3 are mostly flight controls, hence a long ways separate anything down low and there’s no 2/3 plumbing in the nose. Other than the Saigon crash, I’ve never heard of loss of three or all four systems. They’ve been several loss of two systems. Three system loss would be a significant problem if airborne. The one design change I’d have made is rewicker the tail, so all four systems powered the elevators, instead of 1,2, and 3 systems. Next priority would be to replumb the ailerons, L was 1,2 and R was 2,4. The spoilers divided up better but 1,2 failure was a handful with aileron float.

GF

N14AZ wrote:

O/T: when searching for "C5 nose landing gear" I found a lot of pictures of C5's landing without retracted NLG.

Just an observation but it's supposed to happen that way. "Without retracted" equals extended, or down, which is the correct configuration for a landing. You might have meant to say "landing with retracted NLG" or "landing without extended NLG" but maybe I'm wrong.

How often do the struts need to be topped up with N2? I always thought they were non-user serviceable sealed units, similar to the struts installed in cars.

from the pictures, changing the inner tires doesn't look easy.. requiring removal of the outer wheel and axle???

kanban wrote:

from the pictures, changing the inner tires doesn't look easy.. requiring removal of the outer wheel and axle???

They get changed in pairs, so not an issue.

889091 wrote:

How often do the struts need to be topped up with N2? I always thought they were non-user serviceable sealed units, similar to the struts installed in cars.

Not on planes, serviced often by maintenance.

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

889091 wrote:

How often do the struts need to be topped up with N2? I always thought they were non-user serviceable sealed units, similar to the struts installed in cars.

Not on planes, serviced often by maintenance.

Thanks GalaxyFlyer - learn something new everyday.

JohnM wrote:

I knew the guy who over serviced the NLG strut. It was no fault of the Travis guys, it was a Dover flying crew chief. He gave the nitrogen charge all the pressure the nitrogen cart had, I guess thinking more is better.

I guess it finally popped rumbling down the runway - he is very lucky that it did not blow up in his face. It would have probably killed him.

889091 wrote:

GalaxyFlyer wrote:

889091 wrote:

How often do the struts need to be topped up with N2? I always thought they were non-user serviceable sealed units, similar to the struts installed in cars.

Not on planes, serviced often by maintenance.

Thanks GalaxyFlyer - learn something new everyday.

JohnM wrote:

I knew the guy who over serviced the NLG strut. It was no fault of the Travis guys, it was a Dover flying crew chief. He gave the nitrogen charge all the pressure the nitrogen cart had, I guess thinking more is better.

I guess it finally popped rumbling down the runway - he is very lucky that it did not blow up in his face. It would have probably killed him.

He really Bump-ed it up....

The struts on the C-5 have two chambers. The secondary chambers are filled to a set pressure, then the primary chamber is serviced to a X-dimension based on a couple factors.

aeromoe wrote:

N14AZ wrote:

O/T: when searching for "C5 nose landing gear" I found a lot of pictures of C5's landing without retracted NLG.

Just an observation but it's supposed to happen that way. "Without retracted" equals extended, or down, which is the correct configuration for a landing. You might have meant to say "landing with retracted NLG" or "landing without extended NLG" but maybe I'm wrong.

Oooops! Of course, that’s what I meant. Thank you for correcting me. I even found an video of a Galaxy landing without EXTENDED NLG in Frankfurt: https://vimeo.com/133008159

That’s not the emergency I witnessed. "My“ emergency landing was several years earlier.

JohnM wrote:

I knew the guy who over serviced the NLG strut. It was no fault of the Travis guys, it was a Dover flying crew chief. He gave the nitrogen charge all the pressure the nitrogen cart had, I guess thinking more is better. I won't go into this guys original career field, but I'll say he was not very good in it either. In a brilliant move, this guy told the investigators that he only did as he had been shown at Dover, so they lowered the boom on everybody else doing the right thing in Dover. So it was our fault back at home station! Some flying crew chiefs did ok, but some others were loose cannons that never had much oversight or the threat of Quality Assurance walking up on them and going through the wringer. Sorry to make this a FCC bash, but some FCCs I knew could only follow a refuelling checklist, but not follow tech data for much else. That plane was in depot for a very long time getting put back together. Lucky people didn't die that day.

OMG, I was in Ramstein at the time. He was there prior to Dover. He was a GAC troop and we wouldn't let him touch much other than CTK and he would screw that up. We laughed our butts off we heard he became an FCC. We wouldn't let him touch a thing when he flew back through and weren't surprised when we heard about this happening after he Bumped up that NLG. He is a prime example of the difficulty of getting someone out unless they are habitually late, get a DUI, or screw something up. Making him an FCC was a serious management fail on Dover's part that I'm certain went ignored.