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The Christmas break hasn't been quite as productive as I hoped, but I did get some work done. The upper gear leg fairings have have had a lot of massaging, and are now close to the correct contour. I still have several more rounds of fill and sand before I put a coat of paint on. And the paint always allows you to see flaws that had remained undetected til then.


Yesterday I laid up the fibreglas for the lower gear leg fairings. I had thoughts about making them completely removable at one point, but I woke up and decided to do them the way Van recommends. Van recommends bonding the lower fairing to the wheel pants, and splitting it on the same plane as the wheel pant. The part on the front of the landing gear leg fairing will be an integral part of the front part of the wheel pant.

I roughed up the surface of the wheel pant, and cleaned them. The I put 3M 471 Vinyl tape on the bottom of the landing gear fairing, and taped some wax paper to limit the area that resin could run to.

You have to cut the fairings in two, in place, which means that a cut-off wheel is very close to the landing gear leg. I didn't want to risk nicking the landing gear legs, so I taped some pieces of sheet steel to the inside and outside of the landing gear legs.


This evening I split the fairings in two. I was a bit worried about that task, but it turned out much better than I feared. I wiggled sharp knife between the new fibreglas and the gear leg fairing, then slipped a thin strip of aluminum in there. That protected the gear leg fairing from the cut-off wheel. There was a small area in the sharp corner between the gear leg and the wheel pant where I couldn't get the cut-off wheel in, but I managed to cut that with a sharp knife (it was sharp - it's dull now :)).


I need to decide whether to shorten the part of the fairing that extends from the wheel pants, or whether to trim some more off the bottom of the gear leg fairings. I also need to put a bit more fibreglas cloth on the outside to strengthen them, and then do a lot of filling. But they are a good start.