Ch 9.3: Main Gear Installation (2 of 4 cont'd)

With the outside LG tab layups now complete and straight, I can now accomplish the inside layups to finish off the LG tabs and be ready to start mounting the gear between the bulkheads.

Once the outside tabs are built and shaped, the inside tab layups are pretty easy.  This pretty much went according to plans however I did add layers of glass (~10 as I recall) to try to get the total thickness of each tab to approx 1" like the drawings seem to indicate.  You'll find multiple comments about this in the Cozy Group archives.  According to the archive comments, what's important is that the min # and type of plys are used regardless of how thick (or thin) it comes out to be in the end.

Glass ready for inside layups

Outside Main LG Tabs before
starting the inside layups

The one problem that might be created by added the extra plys is that there may be a bit of a stack up of glass where the glass makes the turn from vertical to horizontal over the gear bow...particularly on the thicker leading edge.  There might not be enough clearance for the MKMGA cross tube to be mounted without having to sand out a little glass in the middle first.  Since I added ~10 plys, I don't consider this much of a problem as I'll just be removing some of what I added.



And here are the tabs after the inside layups had cured and were trimmed. You can see how the plys stack up on the leading edge (left side of the left hand pic below).  That's where I might have to trim a bit out of the middle to make room for the MKMGA mounting tubes.

 Next up...Alignment and mounting in the fuselage.
cab