Last Fall I hosted one of our EAA meetings at my hangar and demonstrated how to make a fiberglass nose gear fairing for an "A" model. The program started out with applying the clay, shaping it, and took it up to the point where a coat of epoxy gel-coat was applied. To be able to finish the clay modeling and get the gel-coat applied I didn't have much time for quality control issues; I actually was planning on redoing it after the meeting and making a finished fairing from the second clay model. Well, the first attempt didn't look too bad so I went ahead and made a mold and subsequently a fiberglass fairing.
After pulling the part from the mold it was pretty obvious that I didn't get the trailing edge of the fairing straight. If I aligned the leading edge and trailing edge of the fairing at the top of the fairing the gear leg would be offset to the airflow causing a rudder effect on the nose gear leg. Bummer, I was going to have to make a new mold. After looking at it for a while it dawned on me that it was offset in the direction that would push the nose to the right. I went ahead and finished up the part so it would make a stator vane out of the nose gear and test flew it.
The test flights were very interesting, ball centered with feet on the floor through out my usual cruise speed range. Pretty cool, my mistake turned out to be a pretty good solution to the right rudder usually needed on RVs. I haven't convinced myself if this solution is causing more or less drag than the usual rudder trim tab. Doesn't matter, my RV-7A is ball centered without a trim tab
After pulling the part from the mold it was pretty obvious that I didn't get the trailing edge of the fairing straight. If I aligned the leading edge and trailing edge of the fairing at the top of the fairing the gear leg would be offset to the airflow causing a rudder effect on the nose gear leg. Bummer, I was going to have to make a new mold. After looking at it for a while it dawned on me that it was offset in the direction that would push the nose to the right. I went ahead and finished up the part so it would make a stator vane out of the nose gear and test flew it.
The test flights were very interesting, ball centered with feet on the floor through out my usual cruise speed range. Pretty cool, my mistake turned out to be a pretty good solution to the right rudder usually needed on RVs. I haven't convinced myself if this solution is causing more or less drag than the usual rudder trim tab. Doesn't matter, my RV-7A is ball centered without a trim tab