Wow, I can't believe how long it has been since I worked on the plane and posted here. I haven't been home much for the last 2 weeks. I will stick my neck out here and assume that there is still an interest. So here is an update.

I have the landing gear mounts in for the left wing.

In the 1st photo you can see that the old landing gear mounts have been removed. I have patched in the previous rib cuts and cut new gaps for mounting the landing gear. It also shows the gear set in to place. FYI, Ed pointed out that the gear should be rotated back by 5 degrees. To the best of my measuring I get 4 degrees for both landing gear. I don't want to cut the wing spar up by the retract mechanism to get enough room for 5 degrees. It shouldn't bee too tough to move the spar just a bit in the CAD file so that future builds will have 5 degrees.

The 2nd photo shows the retract mechanism and the mount blocks set in their approximate location.

The 3rd photo shows one mounting block installed as well as carbon fiber veil to strengthen this area. I can't believe how rigid the carbon fiber veil makes this area. You can also see that I added carbon fiber veil tie in the motor mount.

In the 4th photo I just wanted you to see that I cut through the wing skin. You can see the underside of the engine nacelle planking.

OK, this is a poor closeup photo again. I am trying to show in the 5th photo a small air gap between the wing skin and the engine nacelle. It's not a large gap but it will allow SOME air to in to the engine nacelle air intake, through this gap, over the motor, and out around the prop. So there won't be a large amount of air passing over the top side of the wing to cool the motor but when the bottom side of the nacelle is built I will get a lot of air for cooling.

The 6th photo shows the retract secured to the mounting blocks so that I can be sure it all fits before using CA and carbon fiber veil to secure the second mounting block.

The 7th photo shows the finished installation..... well, finished for now. I am going to add plywood strengthening later. I want to fit the flap and aileron Nyrod before adding the plywood.

I hope that a few readers took a moment to use the 3D viewer in my previous post to take a look at this plane in 3D.

I trashed my first attempt at this post with the backspace key. I will have uploaded the images twice now, so it will be interesting to see if it looks right when posted. If not, now you know why.


Mike Roerig
[email protected]