Mounting the Cowl and Bellypan

Cowl Mounting

Jan 28 '04 or so  -- The cowl's on - used a new way to mount it - located the holes then sank 3/8" lengths of inner nyrod into the fuselage to take the servo mounting screws. Looks like it'll work fine. Pics below. .

Bellypan Mounting

The bellypan's next. I've installed 1/8" light ply rails in the base flanges ( 27" long- go figure)  w/ 30 minute epoxy last night and this morning. Now to reinforce the ends and the place where the landing gear will go through...

Reinforcing the ends  -- here are pics of the forward end framing. It's made of 1/16" contest balsa with uniweb (unidirectional carbon fiber bonded to a thin polyester carrier -- nice stuff!) on either side of the balsa. VERY strong and rigid. Should be more so when epoxied to the bellypan. That will allow cutting out the front of teh bellypan for colling and pipe and all that stuff.

SO.. .first I molded the balsa / carbon on the outside of the bellypan... plastic Monokote liner on the pan to protect it... laid it up with thin CA and wrapped it with more plastic for compression.

When cured, pulled it off, trimmed the ends and started fitting it.

Once the fit was right, it was set with 30 min epoxy and microballoons and left under the heat lamp to set up.

The rear of the pan was reinforced with a light ply former - it'll have a bolt through to the fuse as part of the hold down system.
Here's the bellypan with ends trimmed, cooling holes roughed... the un-opened area is where the landing gear will go - it'll be reinforced when the edges of the pan are cut for landing gear leg clearance.

More to follow - executing the pin and screw mounting, setting the landing gear legs and making clearance cuts for them  and so on.

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