Nosewheel well

With the nose gear prepped and the nose floor and wall in place, it was time to flip the tub over.

Why would we flip it over? So we could cut into the floor and install the nose wheel well. It would be pretty silly to have a retractable nose gear and nowhere for the gear to retract. To get started, the gear was bolted into place once more...

and the contour of where the gear retracted was traced onto the exterior.

From there, a symmetrical door with margin was drawn.

Marking up the exterior is one thing, but cutting a hole in the fuselage is another. Despite the terrifying idea of slicing away at the floor of the fuselage, the hole was cut without incident.

This prefab strut cover (purchased from Feather Lite (sorry, no website for those folk)) was dry fit into place.

With the holes cut in the fuselage, it was time to cut a couple more holes in this prefab wheel well, also purchased from Feather Lite. It's dead useful to put little windows in the wheel well. This way you can actually see if your gear is up or not. Visual confirmation!

 The plexi is a little smudged here, but you get the idea.

Instead of bothering with flipping the fuselage back over to bond the wheel well in, Ced just opted to do a quick bond and use duct tape to hold the thing in place while it cured.

The bridge between the wheel well and strut cover needed a little extra trimming for clearance.

The strut cover was a little too shallow, so it needed to be modified.

The sides of the cover were slit and popsicle sticks were used to hold the sides apart while a few plies of glass were added.

 

Ah, that's better.

The strut cover was then bonded in place and the fuselage tub flipped back over.

A micro fillet and tapes were added around the wheel well cover and the little window was tested out.

With everything fitting properly, it was time to prep the nose gear doors. Taking the bit that was cut from the fuselage floor, the urethane foam (yellow stuff) was removed from the pvc foam (green stuff). 

The urethane bit was discarded...

and the pvc foam split in half.

From here, the plan is to mount the doors so they swing outward when the gear extends. We're not at the point to mount them, yet, so they're in storage.

Rudder Pedal Install

Back in February during the nose build, the rudder pedals were installed. That is, of course, a deceivingly simple statement. Let's walk through what went into putting those pedals in.

Remember the nose gear box post? Those NG-30s are the mounting surface for the pedals. The photo below is a reference for what part is being worked on. Those two blue circles in the lower right portion of the NG-30s are the markers for where the pedals will go.

Drilling ensues. . .

and hardware is inserted.

As you can see, half of the pedals are missing due to the need to modify the walls a bit and install additional hardware.

Rudder pedal pivot blocks are carved from high density foam and bonded into place on the outer nose gear walls.

Using the pedal tube as a guide, the nutplate location is identified.

What's a nutplate, you ask? It's a bit of hardware that one makes in order to have a mounting surface for metal-type interfaces. In short, you can't just shove a bolt in foam and fabric and expect things to work well.

This little labor-intensive piece is fitted and bonded into place.

One last fit check. . .

and the nutplate holes are packed with vaseline and the whole thing is covered in 4 plies of BID.

The holes are drilled out again and the pedals are finally installed. Yay!

I may need pedal extensions for my side, but they rotate fluidly. Excellent.