Landing Gear Area Covering

We've mentioned before that since we decided to use the Grove landing gear it has caused a few issues with our build and it's not documented in the Just Aircraft Builder's manual.  Since the gear will pass through the bottom fabric, we needed to control air infiltration through the openings.  In previous Blog postings we showed pictures of the additional elements we added to support the Grove landing gear.  No we are starting to add the fabric that will enclose the gear area preventing cold air from getting into the cockpit.  We added three coats of the U500 adhesive to the area in preparation of adding the fabric.  Hours: 2

Cleaning and Organizing

We've spent many hours trying to get the garage/workshop organized and cleaned before we begin covering the fuselage.  We had airplane parts placed all over the place and it was becoming increasingly harder to find various things.  We cleared off a few shelves and put labels on boxes.  "Parts removed for Covering", "Fuel System Parts", and "Landing Gear Parts" were just a few of the new storage boxes created.  We probably put 8-10 hours into this effort in total.  We are not including this time in the build hours.

Landing Gear Opening

We continued to work prepping the fuselage for covering.  Two fore/aft members were added onto the sideways members added previously.  This is forming the opening in the fabric that will allow us to pass the Grove landing gear through the covered fuselage.  Two 1/2" aluminum tubes were machined on the metal mill to tightly fit.  After the areas were roughened and cleaned with acetone, they were epoxied in place with the Hysol epoxy.

1/2" aluminum tubes epoxied in place

Computer Edited to show opening size

We also checked over the fuselage and found quite a few locations that had finish pits.  We cleaned the rust from these areas and applied epoxy primer that matched the Gray paint color.  There were a LOT of areas that needed touch-up.  Hours: 3

Baggage Door Frame and Gear Opening

We finished carefully cutting and shaping two square and one round aluminum tube to frame the baggage door area.  Afterwards, we cleaned the parts, roughed up the mating areas slightly, and epoxied them into place with Hysol.  Once the epoxy cured a bit, the fillets were smoothed with a wet finger.

Baggage door opening

Close-up of baggage door epoxy joints

Similarly we cut and shaped 4 aluminum tubes that will frame a pass-through opening for the landing gear.  Having this special opening will allow us to easily remove or service the Grove landing gear without removing fabric in the future. We epoxied the tubes between the bottom stringer and the fuselage.

Gear opening tube epoxied b/w the bottom stringer and fuselage

 We still have a few cross-tubes to cut and install to finish off the gear opening, but need to make some measurements and test a mock-up first because we want to make these openings as small as possible, but just large enough to feed the gear through.   In prep for this, we removed the tires and brakes, and put the fuselage back on the rotisserie.  This will allow us to rotate the fuselage around so we can test this out.   Hours: 8