08/03/2025 - Leg Fairings begins (p1) - 7h
I always thought the fear fairings and leg pants were the last thing I would ever to on the airplane before final assembly. As the engine is still not ready, I can't start the firewall forward work and am trying to find other tasks to complete in the long wait. I'm running out of electrical system work as well so decided to go for the gear fairings next. I always though this would be a walk in the park but after reading the manual and seeing some video's from other builders, as usual thing look simpler then they are in reality. The manual is very vague when it comes to installation of these and the plans look like a mystery when you first look at them. I found the video's from Karetaker Aero very usefull to get an intial idea about the steps involved in the process. Once you've seen those and revisit the manual, things become a lot clearer.
I hadn't thought of it before, but the manual clearly states how critical the installation of the gear leg fairings is. If not properly aligned, a difference of 1/4 inch can cause serious slip of the skid ball in straight and level flight which requires significant rudder input. I will try to write down and illustrate my process in detail in future articles.
First thing I did was cut out the template from the plan. It feels bad having to cut up an original plan but I have to way to copy such a large paper so decided to go ahead that use a cutter to cut nicely across all the lines. There are multiple dimensions for multiple type RV's so make sure you cut along the right lines up and down. The size at the bottom is very liberal and you will have to further trim it down but you should only do this from the bottom (the narrow side). The top side is the exact size of the line on the left side of the plan.
Here you see the cutout of the template on the RV7 lines.