The electronics for the nose gear were a big deal. It comes from a Marc Zeitlin design. Here’s a link to the schematic

From there Wade Parton, a skilled Long-EZ builder, did some great work tweaking the circuit.

Then my wiring guy, Simon, added his extensive knowledge and magic to go over the circuit and make things quite a bit smaller and lighter along with a few other tweaks. The drawing below gives an idea of whats happening.

I’m not giving Simon’s details, he is too busy working on my wiring and I will not be the reason for extra distractions.

We have a great extend and retract on a linear actuator which comes from Jack Wilhelmson, EZ-Noselift.com

I wanted a different auto extend and emergency extend and thats what all the circuits and fuss is about.

It was Marc’s idea to make something that worked in a particular speed range AND have an onboard laser sensing if you are 300 feet from the ground.

If you are having a very bad day and ignore the gear warning systems triggered off the throttle retard, Marc’s concept is that it will extend automatically. In my opinion this is an improvement on the one Jack offers although his has worked very well for many years in lots of planes.

As I pilot I can say that of course we never forget our checklists and drills for putting the gear down. However, if three or more things happen at once that you didn’t expect at a critical time in the landing phase… well, some great airmen have forgotten the gear.  I wish to avoid the embarrassment and not join the nose draggers club.

There is a lot of magic in the box. Simon made two so I can swap one out if I have problems reducing any downtime.

It is very likely I will never need the second box. Probably because there is one!

Here it is, box in place. There is also an emergency extend. This button bypasses all the electronics and puts power to the actuator from the standby battery. That battery gets charged in flight so its always ready.

The lights are very simple. Yellow when the gear is running. You might notice I have it installed in the plane with the lettering plate. Exciting to have a small part of the panel installed.

Green when the gear is down. No light when the gear is retracted. So it conforms to the dark cockpit concept when all is well. Just like a Boeing.

As usual crazy hours were involved in all this which I’m not logging.