Main Landing Gear Gusset Assembly and Installation
The assembly of the Landing Gear Attachment Gusset was pretty straight forward. The installation was a different story all together. For stater's, the instruction manual leaves much to be desired. I have built model airplanes with better instructions than those that cam with the Pulsar I. The Pulsar plans are not terrible but pretty close to it. The plans just do not provide any pictures of what the finished product should look like nor do they provide enough cross reference material. If it were not for having the luxury of inspecting another builders video of his install, I would have been shooting from the hip. Additionally, a person has to become a circus monkey to be able to fit in the area that needed to worked upon.
The way the plans call for the layup of the fiberglass was clear. However, the angle of the attachment gusset was not. I did the best I could. I will be going back and strengthening both the left and right gussets by adding another layer of glass.
Plans call for the joining of the composite section to the aluminum plates that were pre-glassed at the factory. Prior to install, the sides with the red X's have to be removed. They were peel plied at the Aero Designs factory. Plans call for beveling the composite to match the thickness of the aluminum and to use a micro slurry to tack them in place for glassing.
Here I am cutting the pattern for the composite portion of the gusset.
Instructions shown for clarity.
The narrow end is the top and is located directly behind the lower seat back bulkhead.
Plans call for the first layer of glass to be four inches of glass tape. The four inch was changed to six inches because the four inch would not cover the area properly. The next two layers are unidirectional glass with the the last layer being the six inch glass tape.
This is the finished product Fitted, with micro filet, glassed, and sanded.
Author
This post is from Clyde Oyler's Pulsar I
