Tonight we finished the landing gear installation. This consisted of  making 3 blocks, at the front mounting, which tie the bulkhead and firewall together. Next, the rear mountings were completed and bolted into place. To further strengthen the nacelle sides which we had to lengthen, we installed hardwood triangle stock.

On the "big birds" we built in the past, we always pinned the firewall to the motor box sides. The construction of this plane does not lend itself to doing this. Our fix for this was to drill angled holes through the firewall into the nacelle motor box sides and install .156 dia solid carbon fiber rod. This looked so good that we decided to pin the rear nacelle motor box sides as well. After all the fire walls were sanded smooth we took the wing outside and cleaned thoroughly using an air hose. Next some shop clean up before calling it a night.

Next week we will tackle the mounting of the wing flaps!

On the back side of the hardwood spar we glued 3/8 X 3/4 basswood to bolt the actuator. At this point the actuators are not glued in. We will not glue the flap to the actuators til after every thing is fiber glassed. As usual this is more time consuming to do than write about. I wanted to include the picture of the top side of the wing but am limited to 4 pictures per week and thought the 4 chosen were more useful.

The 5th picture showed the topside with the flaps in the up position. The black line you see along the rear of the flaps matches the contour ot the top side of the wing just like the full scale. Next week we will hook up the controls for the flaps and start fitting the ailerons.

-- Gary Himes