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Wheel Fairing Plans - Read twice cut once

TimO

Well Known Member
This is from page 46A-04 for tricycle gear builders...

The plans are ok, but, there is a way to misinterpret the plans and make a mistake, and this hopefully will prevent you from doing that.

You are locating a gear leg and brake line cutout in the wheel fairings, and it gives you some reference points. When I first laid out the hole I did it using the green marker in the photo below. I mistakenly used the dimple hole in the fairing as the reference, which is the hole below the cutout in the drawing. This is not correct. This is a hole that is not yet located. So your SOLE reference when marking the cutout is the hole ABOVE the notch you are creating....the one 2-3/16" from the hole along the fairing surface arc.
That is in red in my photo.

If you mix these up, your gear leg cutout will be in the wrong spot. If you do it successfully (I'm glad I caught it), it should fit almost perfectly with only a little filing to do.

I'm sure that 99% of the builders aren't as dumb as I am, so you won't have this issue, but, having that hole which is labeled "mark then match-drill" got me going down the wrong path. It makes perfect sense once you know what you're doing, but if you start using that point as a reference you're doing it wrong. It may be helpful to actually have a sentence in the plans in bold saying to use the upper hole as the reference, or a "do not use as a reference" listed by that hole.

Otherwise, so far the process has been pretty good. I do like these brackets better than the ones on the RV10, and the pre-dimpled fairings make the process pretty nice so far.

Wheel_Fairing_Cutout_01.jpg
 
Funny and Timely, ahhh a wee bit late for me.

Yes a good tip indeed, I have been fitting SJ pants, and fitted the first one with the slot in the wrong place :eek:, the second one was perfect. 3 days ago used 4-5 layers of glass to fill the hole and re cut more acceptably.

At least you did not cut the slot in the wrong place. However, it only took 30 min to fill it, and a day for curing to recut. Not much in the big picture.

At least Vans has good instructions and plans.
 
So that's how you got to fly your RV before me, aircraft is only half built. For those that do not know , I'm joking.
 
I know, I HATED doing the wheel fairings after I flew the RV-10 so I swore I'd do them before flying on the 14. But when it came right down to it, I wanted it in the air. So now I have the drudge work of finishing the dang things. If anyone wants to come do them I'll give you $500 if I don't have to touch them anymore... ;) You just have to do them here so I can keep flying.
 
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