Much of this section was completed prior to delivery as part of the quick build fuselage. The location of the king pin and shock locations were set, for example, but we did rough out the inside skin where the gear leg pass down through and reinforce it with two layers of bid. Then we located the captivator and drilled and tapped the associated angle brackets.

Setting these stinking bushings, however, was like wrestling a greased pig weighing 350 pounds. It seemed easy enough, we’d already picked and drilled the locations of all of the holes, and hey, without the weight of the plane it’ll be no problem getting that bolt back in there! Wrong. The bolt comes out – SPROING – the gear leg jumps to the copilot side. Since I had gotten unambiguous instructions to keep the bushings comparably aligned (by depth into the keel) this was an issue that took an evenings convincing to get squared away. You simply must be resourceful building a plane, it’s a real ‘see the ball, hit the ball’ environment once you get structural adhesive setting up on something. These bushings also get glassed over with TRIAX similar to the main gear pads. The exception in our case is we made them a bit oversized to compensate for cutting the keel stiffening layups a bit smaller earlier.

Nose Gear Captivator Plate	Nose Gear Top
Nose Gear Shock, King Pin, & Captivator Plate	Nose Gear Side

Posted By: Brett Ferrell
Wednesday June 19th, 2002 at 5:07 PM

Categories: Fuselage Keel Landing Gear
Tags: Building Fuselage Keel Landing Gear