Mark Langford's KR2S Project Page


Fairings

Originally written Sept 17th, 2002


This is the beginnings of the pitot/static tube fairing. It's rounded on the front and tapered at the rear.


This is my transponder antenna fairing. I made this from a mold consisting of a piece of plastic tubing with a credit card taped tangentially to each side, wrapped with duct tape. The top plug is micro. I used two layers of 5.85 oz 7553 cloth for this.


This is what micro should look like when you're using it as filler, and it shouldn't run or change shape over the course of 30 seconds or so.


This is the fairing for the fuel vent line, made from one layer of carbon fiber. The top isn't shaped properly yet, and I've already sanded the aluminum tube flush with the fairing since this photo was taken.


This is the finishing touches on the stub wing's lower fairing with the fuselage. I used SuperFil so that the difference in color would help feather the edges properly.


Here's what I did for the gear leg fairing. I just built a little duct tape dam and poured in some 2 part urethane foam, shaped it to something nicely rounded, particularly on the outside where the angle is much less than the magic 90 degrees.


Then I glassed it with two layers of glass, making sure that I put packing tape on the gear leg itself so that it can be "broken loose" so that the gear leg could slide around and relieve some of the stress during landings, which might keep it from cracking later on. Really, I should have just sprayed PVA on it (poly vinyl alcohol), so it could simply be washed away. As it is now, the packing tape will probably be there forever.


Here it is during final smoothing with a little micro filling in some of the low spots, and where it sits at the moment.

The trailing edge of the gear leg itself will need something, like maybe a thin aluminum or fiberglass trailing edge coming to a point. But I'm going to save that job for later (after I'm flying) after the wheel fairings are installed.

I think Dan Diehl used to sell (maybe he still does) some fairings made for exactly this job. You just screw, glue, or glass them on. Troy reports that Cessna wing strut fairings fit almost perfectly, at least on his gear.

More later.

See y'all in Red Oak!

Return to the Mark Langford's KR2S Project