Linas came along with me. Here we had spread out so Linas could do some flying. John and Todd were off trying to get good air-to-air shots of Todd's new paint job against the mountain backdrop.
When I got back to Chino I went flying with Dave Klages in his RV-8. I had never flown in a tandem RV before. I'm very happy I went with a side-by-side. The rear seat is pretty cramped back there in the -8. I'll sacrifice the shoulder room any day for the better leg room. Anyway, I don't mean to complain. The -8 is a beautiful plane. An RV is an RV.
After that I worked on the right gear leg fairing. Here...lemme give some more detail on how I did these, in case it helps. First I trimmed the fairing as per the plans. It's not hard, just cut the pattern out of the drawing, trace it onto the fairing, and trim/sand. Here I'm taping the trailing edge to keep it rigid while drilling the hinge.
The goal is to get the trailing edge as straight as humanly possible before drilling the hinges. Some people clamp an angle on here, but I didn't really see the need. Just be careful how you tape it, and the tape should hold things pretty well.
I put the hinge in place and let it kind of rest in the crevice, so to speak.
This is hard to describe, but I did make sure to leave a slight gap between the fairing and the side of the hinge I wasn't drilling at first. This ensures that the fairing's trailing edge will get pulled tightly together as opposed to leaving a gaping slot in the back. You know what I mean if you've got these parts in hand.
I set up the drill stop so that I wouldn't go drilling through the other side of the hinge...just enough to go through the fairing and one hinge.
I used a rivet spacing fan to mark the rivet holes, drilled 'em, deburred, countersunk the fairing, and then riveted it all together. The fairings are both ready for installation on the gear legs now. Well, actually I need to cut some slots in the fairings for the clamps, but that's a quick thing. What's going to be time consuming is jacking the plane up off the gear to relieve the load and let the gear float where it'll be in flight. I'll be using an engine hoist to lift the plane up from the engine mount, and propping the tail up high to level the longerons. It's a whole kinda convoluted process that I'll undoubtedly document when I get around to doing it.