Starting the Wheel Fairings

The wheel and gear leg fairings make the airplane way more aerodynamic–you can count on it adding about 15 knots to the cruise speed, so not installing them really isn’t an option.  I was hoping we could wait until after our first flight to fit them, but I received overwhelming feedback that doing that is a giant pain, since the wings would already be attached and make access to the wheels much more difficult.  Oh, well.  Another upside is that the airplane is already raised on a table.  The airplane’s weight has to be off the wheels to fit the fairings, since they have to be aligned while the airplane is in the “in flight” attitude (for those who don’t know, “attitude” is basically the way the airplane is pointed relative to the horizon or oncoming air).

Speaking of alignment, what a pain.  The wheel fairings have to be aligned exactly along the rotational axis of the fuselage.  Otherwise, it’ll try to “turn” the airplane one way, which requires a control correction and thus makes the airplane slower.  Aligning required a lot of measuring, leveling, lasers, plum bobs, etc.

We got it aligned and started working.  Here I am inspecting the inside of one wheel fairing.

Kelly needed more light to inspect the other fairing.  I think there’s some greenhouse effect going on here.

Here I am starting the measuring and fitting.