One of the things I am most proud of are my wheels.

During the time the T-28 was in service with the military especially the Navy they were out fitted with Good Year brakes.These Brakes had only three pucks. As seen by this photo at right of actual original equipment brakes.
	In addition; both the main wheels and the nose gear wheels were spoked on the original military version as seen in this photo left of an actual original equipment main gear wheel and below a photo of the nose gear wheel. and a photo of an actual original equipment main gear wheel. NOTE: the YAT did not use the nose wheel shown, they used the same wheel and tire as the mains on the YAT.
For whatever reason the FAA has required that any civilian owned T-28's are required to replace the Good Year brake system with a Cleveland brake system. The Cleveland brake system is easily recognizable as it has two calipers and a total of four Pucks. An example is shown below.
		This brake change required a different wheel which is commonly seen in contemporary photos. The replacement wheel has no spokes as seen in this photo below.
A non spoked nose wheel is also common on civilian aircraft but was not prototypical of the T-28's used by the Navy. I searched everywhere for wheels that were even close to the prototypical wheel. The closest thing I could find was a Bearcat Wheel made by Glennis unfortunately they were unavailable in the right size. Not wanting to overlook this significant detail I explored several ways to produce custom wheels. I got a quote from Glennis on a custom wheel but the price was in the range of $450.00. I happened to be talking with my next door neighbor, an accomplished Mechanical Engineer, regarding the possibility of having the wheels cast. Immediately he said why not have them done on a Stereo Lithography machine. He went on to explain that a 3D Cad drawing of the wheels could be made and then reproduced on a Stereo Lithography machine in ABS plastic. He said he does prototype parts this way all the time (he designs printers). He also stated he had sources to have the part done on the machine. He volunteered to create a 3 dimensional model using ProE. He said he would need as much dimensional information as possible. I went to the local airport in Oxnard to C&J Aircraft Sales. Chuck Smith, the owner had many times let me photograph his large inventory of T-28's. When I asked him about an original wheel he promptly when to his parts shelves and retrieved an original wheel which I intended to photograph. Chuck said "you can have it and take it with you, if you like I can't use it" Elated I took the wheel to my neighbor who set about creating the 3 dimensional model using the actual wheel for dimensions. The drawing took several weeks, working on it in his spare time, but results were beyond expectation.
The end result was quite spectacular as can be seen in this photo with the real original wheel next to the first run prototype wheel produced using Stereo Lithography.
A few modifications later and this is the result.
		The finish wheels were a joint effort with HalH. Hal did a lot of research in an effort to find just the right tires. The nose wheels came out just as nice.
Here Hal has fitted his wheels Larry my next door neighbor even had his machinist machine brake rotors out of aluminum and Hal crafted these Good Year brake assemblies.
		It was a lot of work to come up with accurately scale T-28 but I think will certainly enhance the overall look of the airplane.