Time: 4 Hours
After working a little on the windscreen fairing I decided to start the next project which will be the gear leg fairings and wheel pants. You start with the fairings which just cover the gear legs to give them aerodynamic shape. I made the initial cut at the 25 15/16″ length that Vans calls for but realized these where going to be way to long. They were hitting the brake lines both at the top and bottom. So I grabbed the intersection fairings, these transition the leg fairings to either the fuselage or the wheel pants to see how high the come up or down on the gear leg. After looking at these I was able to trim the gear leg fairing by two inches and still have a lot of length to go under the transition fairings. So I made the trim and put them in place to see the fit.
I clamped the edge in several places to get a good fit and made some marks so that I could return the fairing to the same place when I remove them. The fairings get held on by a piano hinge which gets installed so that as the hinge pin is installed it pulls the two parts together squeezing the aft edge so it’s a nice tight seam. I drew a line down the length of both sides of the hinge and marks for the holes spaced out. The fairing is transparent enough so you can see the drill marks.
I started at the top of the outside at the top and worked my way down the leg by drilling through the fairing then the hinge flange. I cleco’ed each hole as I went. After I finished the outside I moved to the inside and did the same process. I removed the clamps and found that I had a nice tight seam at the aft end. I will square up the aft end with a large block sander after I rivet the hinge in place for it final position.
I repeated the entire process on the other gear leg and have two nice looking fairing. Next up the wheel pants.