It was a rainy day today and Rob offered to come over to work on something. Always good to have an extra hand...especially with Robs vast experience. He had already set up to come for today as we were "supposed" to have the landing gear shims from Vans but the wonderful US Post Office unreliability reared it's head again and they are lost somewhere according to the supervisor at my local post office.....so the plan was scrapped!
Instead we diverted. I wanted to put the snorkel on with the bottom cowl to see if the snorkel was making any contact or rubbing anywhere. We did that and all was clear and good.
After talking we decided to get the landing gear fairings fitted and drilled with the hinges.
The process is pretty straight forward. First, we took a fine sharpie and marked the fiberglass scribed cut lines....they are very hard to see otherwise. Second, we cut down the lines and used the belt sander and a long sanding bar to get them nice and straight. Third, we marked the left and right side and checked the fit and lightly clamped them on per Vans instructions. Forth, it was marking the hole locations per the print and setting the hinges in the gear legs and match drilling the holes into the fairings. Finally it was countersinking the holes for the AN426-3.5 rivets and riveting the hinges to the fairings. Not too difficult....but a time consuming process....took about four hours of this total session.
