Category: Gear Fairings

Since I’m in the fiberglass mindset, I’m choosing to start working on the landing gear fairings. The first step is to make sure the wheel

After splitting the pant halves that were epoxied up last night, I built a jig to help me align the wheel pants to the plane.

After the literal blood sweat and tears (and curse words) in the initial setup of the jig, and with 9 operational fingers, I continued on

The epoxy pads I had injected into the wheel pants last night were cured, so I popped off the front half of the pants and

I started tonight by installing nutplates on the wheel pant brackets. After that, I started working on smoothing the joint between the left pant halves.

The first half of the night was spent repeating the process of cutting back the wheel opening and starting the work on getting the pant

The nose wheel pant construction is very similar to the main wheel pants. I started by cutting down some aluminum blocks that are used as

With the rear half of the nose wheel pant installed, I needed to fit the front half to fit around both the gear leg and

With all of the trimming done on the nose leg fairings, I just needed to rivet in the hinge that closes up the rear of

Today, I got the gear leg fairings cut to shape. I started by making sure the fairings didn’t have any twist in them with a

Tonight was all about the leg fairing piano hinge. I got it match drilled, deburred, countersunk, and riveted in place for the left leg fairing.

Same thing as yesterday, but with the right gear leg fairing.

Nothing too exciting tonight. I just spent the evening match drilling, countersinking, and riveting on nut plates for all 3 wheel pants.

Tonight, I worked on installing the left side gear leg fairings. These are the fairings that smooth out the airflow over the gear leg itself.

The intersection fairings is another place where I will be deviating from the plans. The instructions call for the intersection fairings to simply be screwed