Step 14.5, Landing gear fairings

I am flying, but there is still one construction item to be completed.  The wheel pants and gear fairings.  These are considered non-essential, but they do provide a modest speed increase and they just give the aircraft a finished appearance.

The fairings and pants as received from Van's need to be trimmed to fit and are, as usual, riddled with pinholes to frustrate even the most affable painter.

To get started on the fairing a template is created from the plans that locate the upper attachment slots and the lengthwise edge to be trimmed.

The gear fairing closes around the gear leg and is held closed on the trailing edge with a piano hinge. 

To fit the fairings and pants the weight of the aircraft must be lifted so that the legs will hang in their flying position.

It's a bit of a procedure to align the fairings so that they will point exactly into the air stream.  The aircraft is lifted then leveled and then measurements are taken to ensure the alignment.

A stick holds the wheel pant longitudinally level in its flying position

After the mains are done I move on to the nose wheel.

There are large cap screws that form the attachment points for the tow bar.  Holes must be created through the nose wheel pant to allow the tow bar to connect.  The trouble is, with the pant on you can't see the cap screw.  I saw a method online and I thought I would give it a try: Use a laser to locate the cap screw with the pant off.  Then without moving the plane or laser, install the pant. Presto! The drill location is illuminated.  Well, this only half worked for me.  One side was great, but the other was an 1/8" out of alignment.  I had to fill that hole with fiberglass and then re-drill it.  Oh well, keep moving forward.

With the fairing and pants fit it was time to begin sanding and filling to get ready for paint.  I went through round after round of filling pinholes and thinking I was done only to find new pinholes.  I think it's fair to say that I filled 99.99% of the pinholes.  But with millions of pinholes per square foot, simple math informs us that hundreds of pinholes remain.  Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but only just barely.

Eventually, it was time to start spraying some color.

At long last, the pants are on.

And so this concludes the construction portion of this blog.  At the time of this post, I have 20.2 hours on the plane.  It flies beautifully.   And the speed increase?  About 12Kts.