nose fairing
I spent the day working on the nose gear wheel pant and gear leg fairing. Lots of on and off fitting. I was pleased to find that I have just the right sander to chew on the wheel opening. One might wander what could take so long on these wheel pants. I have no idea, except that I’ve put in about a day and a half on the nose pant and fairing so far. Fitting without taking off too much material is a time consuming thing. Especially when you’re doing it on the floor upside down (the wheel opening). Also, care must be taken to get the alignment somewhat correct as the wheel pants can act as effective rudders if not straight. First step was to find a point on the nose and tail of the wheel pant that we’re going to call the center. We attempt to align a line through these two points with the logical centerline of the fuselage. Then you start hacking on the wheel opening of the rear half until it is roughly in place. Then some cutting on the front half of the pant to get it roughly in place. Next up is to try to get the wheel pant on with the left and right brackets installed on the nose gear fork. Yeah right, not quite as easy as it sounds with the new style design (after ‘04). With the bracket installed and wheel pant aligned in both axes, I drilled the mount bracket holes through the pant. Then everything is locked into alignment. In hindsight, it would be much more effective to take the whole nose gear fork, wheel, pant assembly off of the gear leg at this point and simply mark the wheel opening up on the bench. More fitting of the front half around the wheel and gear leg openings. Then I basically guessed at the placement and drilling of the screw holes that hold the two halves together. Oh yeah, don’t forget a little more trimming and fitting… Now the wheel pant is all clecoed on solid. Good enough, moving on to the nose gear leg fairing. Chop, grind, sand, fit, sand, fit, sand. Poof, it fits after a little more material removal on the wheel pant around the gear leg. The aft edge of the gear leg fairings are held together with some hinge material. I dug that out of the almost empty parts room and drilled the rivet holes in the hinge and fiberglass fairing. I machine countersunk those holes and smeared a very thin coat of epoxy on the hinges and clecoed them back in place. Hopefully the epoxy will keep the rivets from working loose. That is where we are right now. Next up is to squeeze the rivets holding the hinge and nose gear leg fairing. Then I’ll be doing some more trimming and fitting of the gear leg/wheel pant interface for the hose clamp that holds it all together.
My current objective for all of the wheel pants and leg fairings is to complete the basic construction to where all the parts basically fit and can be installed, but aren’t necessarily “finished”. I’ll be flying the first 40+hrs without the fairings installed, so I’ll work on “finishing” the parts during times when I’m not flying before the airplane goes to paint. It will be something good to do to slowly ease myself down off of the building regiment. There is definitely more thought being put into ‘life after RV building’ since I have basically spent every waking moment, outside of the “real” job, for the past 2.5 years in the garage. I don’t think my neighbors even know what I look like any more (I work with the garage closed). I think I have a pretty good plan forming for coming down off of the drug and transitioning to the next project.
