Chapter 9 – Gear leg fairings glassed

Well, at least the underside of them.

I started out by prepping the right gear leg for attaching the gear fairing foam pieces.

Right gear prepped for fairing attach

I figured I would snap a couple of shots of the gear fairing foam pieces ready to install.

Foam fairing pieces staged

Foam fairing pieces staged

I then slathered up the right gear leg with micro as I did the left site and attached all the foam fairing pieces to the gear leg.

Right side fairing micro'd in place

Right side fairing pieces micro'd in place

Here’s another shot of the right side gear fairing.

Right side fairing micro'd in place

I then cut 2 pieces of UNI at a 30° bias for each side, for a total of 4 pieces of UNI each measuring 11″ wide x 32″ long.

2 plies UNI per side

After getting all the UNI cut I mixed up some micro using MGS 335 and applied it to the bottom surface of the left gear fairing.

Left gear fairing micro'd for UNI layup

I then laid up 2 plies of UNI, with the 30° bias going in opposite directions.

2-plies UNI laid up left side gear fairing

I then micro’d the surface & laid up 2-plies of UNI on the bottom side of the right gear fairing.

2-plies UNI laid up right side gear fairing

Here are a couple of shots of the glassed bottom side of the gear fairings.  Again, I’ll layup the top side of each gear fairing after I flip the fuselage over back upright.

2-plies UNI laid up on gear fairing

2-plies UNI laid up on gear fairing

I’ve also been meaning to take a pic of these.  They’re end caps for the Matco axles from VANs aircraft that have a nutplate in the end to allow for mounting the outboard side of the wheel pants.  This eliminates the requirement to drill & tap the end of the axle, which with Matco axels can be a little problematic.

VAN's Matco wheel pant mount axle caps

Tomorrow I’ll clean up the gear fairing layups & then assess the bottom fuselage extension.

 

 

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