This kept the weight down, but the gear on one of the planes did, eventually, start to show some cracks.

At this point, Lancair decided to re-design the gear to NEVER show any sign of stress. Ever. In the entire life of the airplane. No matter how many landings it went though.

The result is below, and I beleive that the Lancair Evolution is the first homebuilt I have seen that should clearly be Carrier-qualified. I mean, seriously. This landing gear could hold a Canadair Regional Jet. Whatever might break on this airplane, it won't be the gear. And that includes if I crash it.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Once we mount the gear in the plane, we very carefully map out it's centerline on the floor by dropping plumb-weights like the ones shown below, and connecting the two plumb-lines with a pulled-taught string with chalk on it. This maps the aircraft centerline onto the hangar floor. Then, we throw this big mat onto the floor, aligning it VERY carefully with the check line. At this point, we have two pre-marked, razor-thin, arrow-straight black lines on white linoleum that are EXACTLY aligned with the direction of the airplane, RIGHT under the gear. We then clamp on the straight-edge, drop down the pump-weights, and tap the landing gear attach fittings with a rubber mallet until the gear is aimed EXACTLY along the black lines, with a 0.5-degree toe-in. How accurate is this process? well, we could measure the plumb-weights to within 1/16th of an inch, over a 44-inch blick-line on the linoleum. That is 0.08 degrees. So, we have our landing gear track where it needs to be within a tenth of a degree.

Once the gear is aligned, we cut out the holes that the gear will retract up into! We would raise the gear by hand, mark where the tire was touching the carbon fiber skin, and then use an air-driven cutting-disc to trim the skin to that point! This involves a LOT of raising the gear, trimming the carbon-fiber, and lowering the gear again until we got it perfect. This is true home-building! With the drill and vacuum running up in the wheel-wells, the noise was deafening, requiring hearing protection. With carbon-fiber dust flying, we needed masks as well. And lifting the 75-pound gear over and over while wearing a mask that limited oxygen flow was NOT so easy!