Chapter 24: Fairings
I didn't work on the fairings until I had to for the Ch 25 finishing, which meant that it happened more in the normal plans sequence than the other elements of Ch 24 that I'd done much earlier.
Strake Upper fairings:
As a part of preparing to do finish work on the upper side of the strakes and fuselage, I needed to get the upper strake fairings completed. This section talks about the shaping and glassing and the next section shows how I created the access for the fuel probes that are buried inside them. Note that it's important to mark where the fuel probes are located where you can see after the fairing is on, if you want to use the method I used. I kept the fuel probe plugs in until I'd finished the fairing and then made an access cavity for the probes and inserted them much as I might do in the future if they needed to be removed. The main reasons for this was that I didn't want to get pour foam on the probe, I considered the frequency of needing to access the probe very low, but I wanted to go through the process of getting access and inserting the probe to make sure I could later get it out without much trouble. Note that I didn't make a removable "door". Jump down there to see what I did and then come back up here, if interested in the shaping glassing process I used. Rather than use a lot of text at this point, I think I'll let the pictures/captions tell the story... |
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Fuel Probes: I'd pre-fitted the fuel probes when building the strakes and fuel tanks, but had left them with a brass plug (see Ch 21: Section IV Misc Completion of Strakes page on this site...). Now that I was covering up their location, I needed to be able to get to them if they had a problem later.
I thought I might need to clear tape over the fuel probe plug to keep it from being a mess when I did the pour foam. It turns out it doesn't matter. I taped one side and didn't tape the other and digging the foam out was equally easy with a dremel. I wouldn't bother if I were doing it again (more steps). I also made a patch of 2 UNI (like I used on the fairing skin) following the method used by Bernie Siu (see his Chapter 24: Section 9 page), but in the end didn't use it. The piece I cut out to access the foam went right back on with good fit, and since I wasn't trying to make a nice looking door, this step was another that really wasn't required for me. I just micro'd the cutout back on and it essentially became invisible as part of the pre-primer finishing process. |
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