Title: Main Gear Cover
I'm following the same method here as Wayne Hicks - making a cover that fills the well, but does not lap over onto the fuselage. It will sit in between the LG bulkheads on lips that I'll fabricate later. For now, once the micro cures on this block of urethane, it will be shaped and glassed, then removed, sanded to an even thickness on the back, and glassed on the back. Shaping the landing gear cover was a little tricky so I spent some time on it. To form the NACA, I dug out the plans NACA scoop profile and used pins to poke marker holes where it belonged. And around the gear I formed a smooth curve that I'll eventually tweak into the gear fairings. The upper surface was just flat, but it still took some time because I knew that after doing the layup and adding micro, I was going to be proud, so I sanded everything to BELOW the bulkhead edges. I did the layup the way you're supposed to, with a flox corner at the NACA transition. The only difference is, I did it all in one go. I glassed the NACA first, and let it set up a bit, then carefully trimmed its top edge flush with scissors, and carved a 45-degree angle into the foam with a razor blade. I made the flox corner, then laid up glass on top of it all. I'll trim it and cut it out tomorrow. Shaping the inside of the landing gear cover was tricky because in some sections there was very little clearance around the gear itself. But its final shape is not very important so I just kind of "went with it". This shape is only 80% complete anyway. The fairing around the gear legs will need some tweaking to arrive at the final shape - I couldn't do that in one step. I intentionally left some clearance so this cover sits IN the gear well by about a sixteenth of an inch. I can use that as room for additional layups to handle the fairings, and fill the rest with micro when I do the final finishing here. Over the weekend I removed the landing gear cover and sanded the foam down for a good, even fit. I then glassed the inside of the cover. To reinstall it, I 5-min epoxied some support strips across it and onto the fuselage. When I did, I inserted some thin spacers cut from some scrap, cured, 2-ply BID. That set the spacers off of the landing brake slightly - my fuselage bottom is finished, and I wanted to allow a bit of room for the micro later. Then I crawled inside and carefully taped off the cover. I put a bead of micro into the corners and built a 2-ply BID lip along the major horizontal edges. These will become the attach tabs after I add some support and nut plates.


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