Main Gear Fairing How-to's

[Wayne Hicks]

Ron Springer and I (and a few others) have been collaborating on how to build those magical, drag-reducing main gear fairings. I've written up the discussions with diagrams on my website in Chapter 9.

Click here to be transported.

[tnt]

Wayne, you've got a text width problem with the page. It doesn't auto-wrap to fit the browser size. If you modify your <DIV statements to remove attributes or width: and probably height: it'll fix it.

[Wayne Hicks]

Yeah, I noticed the wrap problem. Thanx for the heads up on the fix!

[neverquit]

Wayne, you've got a text width problem with the page. It doesn't auto-wrap to fit the browser size. If you modify your <DIV statements to remove attributes or width: and probably height: it'll fix it

For those of us who like to hard copy (steal?) Wayne's hard research before he finishes his plane and pulls his site, copy/paste it to Word and it works fine for now.

[Wayne Hicks]

hah, that's a funny one! You've got AT LEAST another year before my plane's finished. And with Maddy's good graces, the website will be around longer than that.

[Dust]

Originally Posted by Wayne Hicks

hah, that's a funny one! You've got AT LEAST another year before my plane's finished.

in plane building time - a year is just a day

[SteveWrightNZ]

frontpage is whack Easy to use, but disastrous html output.

Alternatives below (or just use your favourite text editor and do some <P>paragraphs</P> and some <img src=filename.jpg>


http://www.w3.org/Amaya/User/BinDist.html

http://www.nvu.com/download.php

[rui]

Great description of the process Wayne, Thanks. I've read the description of how somebody else did it in a CSA newslettter and was left confused.

One thing, wouldn't it be a good idea to put a bead of flox on the trailing edge like we do with all other airfoils on the plane?

[Wayne Hicks]

I don't recall putting a bead of flox on any of my wing trailing edges. I remember putting the strip of peel ply, then joining top and bottom skins as glass to glass at the trailing edge. I do remember filling the indention with micro, but that's just a part of the fill-n-sand process?

[rui]

Yes, micro... little brain fart. But its added as part of the skin layup process to the underside of the airfoil (actually, I've only gotten to this stage on the winglets myself, but I assume that its done for the trailing edges of the main wings also... maybe not?? don't have the plans handy). It seems to me that its done to add strength to the thin trailing edge.

As I remember it, the trailing edge of the stock gear bow is filled with flox which fills in the voids left by adding the soda straw conduit. Seems to me that a trailing edge of glass and foam might be prone to delamination.

[Steve parkins]

Originally Posted by rui

Seems to me that a trailing edge of glass and foam might be prone to delimitation.

some times on "plane show-off day" peoples look at the small parts and how fragile they are and i say YOU THINK ?
i grab a part cut from the fuzz side and have them try to bend it by standing on it, if they are big and can jump, yes it will bend but not brake
so i look at the failure and notice that it started to open up because the sides were not glassed, i wonder just how tuff it would be if it were glassed on all fore sides? one thing is for sure, you'd never bend it
i think there is no parts in the plane that are "open"
[OK, maybe one, ask john]

[Wayne Hicks]

Micro never adds strength. If you pull the peel ply strip prior to glassing the second side as suggested, you will end up doing exactly what we did on the wings. You will end up putting micro in the "trench" like we did on the wings. But.... the angle of the trench will be really shallow because the trailing edge is long and thin compared the wing trailing edges.