saolesen(at)sirentel.net
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 Posted: Sat Feb 05, 2011 8:03 pm Post subject: Winter and wheel pants |
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Last year I left my wheel pants on for the entire winter. Unfortunately, ice chunks formed in the space behind the tires. The rotation of the tires hurled the chunks around inside the wheel pants and caused the paint to crack and chip from the inside. Last spring I repainted all 3 pants. I didn't want to repeat the painting but I wanted to keep the main gear strut fairings in place so I came up with this solution.
The fiberglass was laid up over the wheel pant using duct tape for the separation medium. Each hole on the wheel pant was marked with a sharpie to keep the alignment of the strut correct. I used 4 layers of bidirectional cloth. The layup is in 2 pieces. They were done simultaneously. The aft piece was laid up first. I used 2 pieces of duct placed adhesive side to adhesive side to separate the two pieces. The duct tape was placed on the forward edge of the aft layup and the forward layup was done over the duct tape. After the glass was laid up I ran a nail through each black sharpie mark trying to keep the nail hole centered on the screw hole. I then drilled to the correct size and added nut plates. I'm not going to paint these--the sun is too low to damage them and they are not outside for long.
I flew the setup today and noticed no adverse effects. It has been so long since I flew without wheel pants and gear fairings I don't know exactly how much the airspeed is affected and what the difference between the two setups would be. I read somewhere that most of the drag comes from the gear struts so I'm sure it helps some, but how much I can't quantify.
Sheldon Olesen
N475PV 238 hours
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