Homebuilts with spring steel landing gear have the advantages of light weight and simplicity over traditional shock absorber or trailing link arrangements. What they sacrifice, however, is controllability over rough terrain. Beringer Aero seeks to remedy that trade-off with their new Shock Wheel suspension units. Shock Wheels simply bolt on to the leaf spring main gear to provide instant shock absorption and better control. Each Shock Wheel contains two oleo shock absorbers, an axle a Beringer wheel (no tire) and a disc brake assembly, with caliper and disc.
Once the Shock Wheel unit is bolted onto the spring steel gear, the shock absorbers are adjustable with air pressure fed through a Schrader valve. Each valve is readily accessible at the top of the shocks. Then, rolling over a rock in the runway or off airport landing field will a much smaller problem than before. The Shock Wheel units come in two iterations, a Sport Edition (SE) that will be well suited to wheel pants and an All Terrain Edition (AT) meant to accommodate larger tundra tires and inhospitable terrain. Each unit has 3.2” of oleo-pneumatic absorption and weighs 6.5 pounds per side. The units are designed to work on aircraft with gross weights up to 1430 pounds.
Beringer is rolling out the Shock Wheels for the Zenith 701 and the Kitfox line of aircraft at this time. They are working on making them fit other aircraft, including the Vans RV series. You can get more information at beringer-aero.com.
