> What's your view on fitting root fairing to fuse, foam or no foam?
Ron,
It's never occurred to me to use any sort of foam gasket between
fairing and fuselage...t'would appear that to do so would simply
exacerbate the interference drag betw. wing & fuse, which as I'm sure
you're aware, increases at the square of the airspeed.
When bonding the fairings (i.e., the stock fairings) to the wing, I
had some difficulty getting them to kiss up tightly to the fuselage,
primarily on the wing underside forward of the spar...I made cut-off
wheel slots in the fairings to increase their flexibility, and then
smeared flox in the slots when I was bonding the fairings to the wing
and used clamps and compression struts so the fairings cured in the
desired place and profile...pixs attached.
I will follow the lead of other meticulous builders and build up the
fuselage w/ micro to ensure a smooth transition between fairing and
fuselage...and then when complete and after rigging, I will use the
stretchable sailplane tape to seal the joint.
The wing spar pin placement (at least on my ship) ensures that the
wing itself will not apply compression loads to the fuselage sides;
the flexibility of the fairings will absorb any compression loads due
to wing flex under high G loads...so say gurus like Graham S. and
Justin Kennedy.
I'm told that when one does use micro to build up the fuselage to
match the thickness of the fairing, unless care is taken to allow the
fairing to "ride" over the micro buildup by angling the joint, one is
apt to experience a disconcerting (but benign) "whomp!" when G loads
are encountered and the fairing snaps out of the slight recess formed
by the micro build up.
In addition to smoothing the wing/fuselage transition, the edge of the
micro buildup has the added benefit of being a nice visual clue for
positioning the wing incidence when rigging.
