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I am getting ready for my first flight and still can't decide on a good method of holding my gear leg fairings in place. I've adhered some rubber channel on the top and bottom where it contacts the engine cowling and the wheel pant. I noticed they fit pretty tightly around the leg, and the rubber channel keeps them from damaging the cowl or pants. I'm thinking about not securing them and just letting them weathervane in to the wind, if they even move. Does anyone see a potential problem with not securing the gear leg fairings in place and letting them "float"?

Direct C51 wrote:I am getting ready for my first flight and still can't decide on a good method of holding my gear leg fairings in place. I've adhered some rubber channel on the top and bottom where it contacts the engine cowling and the wheel pant. I noticed they fit pretty tightly around the leg, and the rubber channel keeps them from damaging the cowl or pants. I'm thinking about not securing them and just letting them weathervane in to the wind, if they even move. Does anyone see a potential problem with not securing the gear leg fairings in place and letting them "float"?

From a safety perspective, my two cents (worth far less) is any chafing on brake lines. I had this problem and ended up securing my fairings to the fuselage up under the cockpit with a sort of L shaped bracket and a nutplate. The fairings on my Sonex liked to move around until secured.

Your mileage may vary.

Robbie, thanks for the info. How long did you fly yours with the gear leg fairings floating?

I flew my Waiex for several years with hinge pins sticking out from the middle of the gear leg fairing; one went into a hole in the fiberglass wheel pant and the other through a hole in the bottom of the forward fuselage skin. This helped with keeping the fairing from twisting around the gear leg, but it could still move up and down on the leg.

For the small time commitment it takes, I recommend you do what Robbie suggested; it's worth having the fairings secured to the fuselage somehow just to keep it from scratching up the wheel pant.

Just my two cents of course! Best of luck!

The best method I've found is to make some fiberglass cuffs via the Jeff Schultz method. These are molded to mate the fairing to the fuselage and hold the fairing very nice to the pants too. Check his website for details. The fairings just float inside the cuffs.

Interestingly, I recently started allowing my fairings to float after years of having the pins elongate the holes in the fuselage and the wheel pants. I merely cut the pins down to where they are flush with the fairings.

My fairings are very tight around the legs so it's not as if they are flopping around or sliding down the legs because of gravity.

I'll add that my fairings have some generous dimensional space at the ends (ill fitting compared to say, Jeff's) so rubbing is not an issue. I'm not missing the "stab the pin in the structure" process, however.

Maybe I'm just getting too old to care...:)

EDIT...I have cable operated brakes with a large enough cutout in the fairing to not have any rubbing issues. Also I have rubber channel at the fairing ends. No problem with contact anywhere.

Direct C51 wrote:Robbie, thanks for the info. How long did you fly yours with the gear leg fairings floating?

About 65 hours before I noticed it was starting to chafe. It was not bad and had not become a problem, yet - but was headed that way.

I'll try not to offend anyone who may think that this is obvious, but in case some folks have not considered this, adding too many attachment points to something that moves can be a bad thing...
I think that Mechanical engineers like to refer to this as "over-constraining". This might be observed in pin-holes becoming elongated as previously mentioned for example.

So, keep in mind that the gear deflects while static (from fully unloaded as in-flight), with additional 'full' deflection during a hard landing. Something's gotta give. However, I'm certainly not advocating too loose either - last thing we need is unintended flutter on anything attached to our airplane - rigidly or not so much.
Mine are constrained only at the bottom end with the lower gear mounting bolt, and with a snug wrap around the leg itself that makes installation a challenge with two pins inserted at the center in opposite directions (no cabin piercing required). Lots of solutions are possible with the same end result. Best part of home building.