Source: 2009 Beartracks, Eric Newton
For us it was bust – twice. Once on the way up and once on the way back – both times what “busted” was our tailwheel fork. My wife Michelle and I started off our Oshkosh trip by loading everything needed for camping out for a week. This included tent, camping gear, lawn chairs, ice chests, 2 cases of bottled water, mattresses, and all of our clothing and other “necessities”. To say we were loaded to gross and max aft CG was an understatement.
Here is our Bearhawk all loaded up and ready to go:

On the way up there, our first fuel stop was in Tunica, MS. With a fairly stiff and gusty crosswind we had a bit of a hard landing but nothing too serious and she rolled out straight and true. When I taxied up to the ramp, the lineman directed me over to a parking spot. As I started my turn to the right, I heard a weird sound and noticed that steering while taxiing got very hard to do. I was thinking that the wind was much stronger than usual and was affecting it, so I went ahead and forced it over to where the lineman was directing me, using brakes and more power.
After deplaning I walked around the back and looked down at the tailwheel and saw that it had broken right
where the fork is welded to the cross piece and the tailwheel was sitting at an unusual angle:

Now that’s a heck of a way to start off a trip! Well, as luck would have it, there was a guy right there on the
field who maintains a fleet of crop dusters. He was able to help me get my tailwheel disassembled and re-welded as good as new within a few hours. To top off my good fortune, the guy wouldn’t even take any money for the work he had done. Yep – there’s still a lot of really great people out there – and most of them are hanging out at small airports across the country.
The rest of our trip up to Oshkosh went without a hitch. We had one more fuel stop at Litchfield, IL which was offering cheap fuel ($3.35 a gallon for 100LL). We also had to land at an airport in Juneau, Wi to wait out some bad weather before continuing on to OSH. We spent a wonderful week at Oshkosh and met a lot of really great people. While up there, I talked to Bob Barrows about the tailwheel and he reminded me that he had changed the tailwheel plans after I had already built mine to include a reinforcement strap at the weld where mine broke. I had just never gotten around to doing the modification. I also met with Scott Weinberg who manufactures the Bob Tailwheel and saw his modifications to that area. I almost bought a new one from Scott right then and there but decided to just keep mine and do the modification after I got home (bad decision, and you will soon see why).
On our way home, we decided to return to Litchfield, IL once again, due to the cheap fuel. So about 2.5 hours after departing from OSH we were in the pattern for Litchfield. The wind was nearly calm and I lined up with the runway and touched down nice and smooth. After landing, we rolled out straight and slowed to taxi speed. I then started to turn around to the left to back-taxi on the runway to the FBO for fuel , when all of a sudden it happened! The tailwheel plopped onto the runway with a thud and I could hear loud scrapping noises. Rather than leave it on the runway I applied power and dragged it off into the grass field alongside the runway. Shutting down and getting out, I walked back and took one look at the tailwheel and could see that it was much worse than before. This time, the tire and wheel were laying flat on their side on the ground and the fork was twisted completely around 90 degrees.
In a few minutes, an old pickup truck came driving up the runway to meet us. Out jumped a guy who says “Don’t worry, I’m a mechanic and I can fix anything. Hop in the back and I’ll go get some tools and a jack and have this fixed up in no time.” So Michelle and I looked at each other, shrugged and jumped onto the open tailgate and off we went to the FBO. Once there, the mechanic tossed me the keys to an old GMC van and told us where to go get some lunch, while he works on getting the tailwheel off so we could see what it looks like. So off we went to get a little lunch and to try to figure out what to do next.
When we got back to the airport about 1/2 hour later, the mechanic says “I got some bad news and I got some good news. First the bad news:This time the other fork broke off at the weld (not the one we welded in Tunica on Saturday). Here was the damage:
As you can see this was not repairable. The one fork could be welded back on, but the one that stayed
attached was badly twisted at the bottom. As you can imagine I had a few choice words, once again kicking myself for not making the change that Bob had put out. Stupid! Here I was in the middle of nowhere with a broken, unrepairable tailwheel. What now? That brings us to the good news:We actually landed about 15 miles away from one of the few airplane salvage yards in the country – Central Airparts.
So the mechanic gave us directions on how to get there and off we went in the old GMC van searching for this airplane salvage yard. The directions went something like this: “Go down old Hwy 66 and turn right on to IL- 352. When you get to an old trashy looking mobile home, turn right on to the dirt road, then go about 1 1/2 miles and you will see a mill, turn left there, go over the bridge and keep going until you see a bunch of wrecked airplanes next to an old airstrip that you would be out of your mind to try and land at. That’s the place – Go inside and ask for Bob.” Well about 1/2 hour later, we actually found the place. Bob was a super nice guy that had been in the business for over 36 years. He had tons of scrap airplanes and a big building lined with shelves full of airplane parts.
Bob (and his dog and a black cat) was expecting us and said “so you need a tailwheel, huh?” I showed him our old one, he took a few measurements and out we went into the building where Bob started pulling tailwheel after tailwheel off the shelf and measuring them. Finally he came up with two Maule tailwheels and said “well I don’t have one to fit your spring but I think we can take these two and combine the parts to make one that will fit.”
The Maule tailwheel actually looked pretty good and the tire, tube and wheel looked brand new. I know that he knew that I had no choice but to buy the tailwheel, so I was figuring that he was going to want about $500 to $600 for this one and that was probably without the tire and wheel. I asked Bob how much he wanted for it but he didn’t answer me right away. Instead he engaged me in some conversation asking about the airplane and how was Oshkosh. When I told him I built a homebuilt airplane called the Bearhawk, we started talking back and forth about various airplanes that he had worked on and about his visits to Oshkosh over the years. Finally, about 1/2 hour into it, Bob looked at me and said “How’s $195 sound and I’ll throw in the tire and wheel with it?” Again, great people are to be found at small airports.
So off we went back to the airport and the mechanic, who helped me mount the Maule tailwheel onto the Mudbug He greased it up and checked the tire pressure. I then hopped in and taxied it over to the fuel pumps for some $3.35 a gallon 100LL. We finally made it back home – full of wonderful memories and glad to be finally home. Even though the Maule tailwheel was working fine, I went ahead and placed an order with Scott Weinberg for a 10″ tailwheel and replaced the Maule one. I sold the Maule tailwheel to another builder and now have a new Bob tailwheel. All-in-all, we had a really great trip and learned that there are really some nice people out there at the local small town airports.
The Modification:
The modification to the Bob Tailwheel is really simple. You take a strip of 1/8″ thick 4130N steel, 1/4″ wide and about 8″ long, and wrap it around the weld joint where the fork meets the cross piece / king pin assembly. The following pictures are courtesy of Rod Smith. As you can see the 1/4″ wide steel strip wraps around the fork to the cross piece connection: