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Low sitting wheel fairings

Reilly

Active Member
Hi guys

The fairings sit very low when installed per Vans plans. This is compounded by the camber of the wheels which make the fairings lower on the outsides.

I fly from a fairly rough airfield and have already suffered damage.

My bottom openings are wide enough it's the height that is a problem.

Has anyone raised the fairings up by making lower attachment holes?

Reilly
 
The height of the pants is at your discretion. Wanna go really fast? Mount ‘‘em low. Wanna use bumpy fields? Mount ‘em high. Moving them isn’t a problem other than re-aligning them and getting all of the transition fairings to fit again with the new geometry.
 
Yeah you are correct Kyle. I mounted as per plans not realizing they would sit so low. There are no transition fairings on the 12. Just the gap around the gear leg that would need modification.
Speed not an issue for me it just looks nicer with them on and i have them.
 
Wheel Spats

They told us at A&P school that nothing was supposed to rub the pavement if a tire goes flat. I 'spect that's why the pants sat so high on type certificated airplanes back then (70s). Looking at some more current airplanes, I don't think that's a rule any more. Cirrus fairings in particular look vulnerable to me. But yeah, it's true that the most efficient fairings fit very close to the tire and ride very low to get the best possible shape for streamlining. Check out raceplanes. The old-timey Vans pants on our RV-6 sit so high our airplane is sometimes called Erckel. Never had a flat, but I think the tire itself would be the only problem if we did. On the other hand, my buddy's RV-6 has tight fitting, low-riding fairings and he's actually gone to the trouble of making form-fitting drill templates to simplify drilling new pants in the event he has a flat and he had to make special low profile chocks. And his plane is fast, partly because of his careful work on this fairings, i'm sure. Even if the pants sit fairly high, I believe you still get a bit of speed, maybe 3 or 4 knots or so. Then there's the Aero Commander 100 (kind of a Cessna 172 clone) that picks up a couple of knots if you remove the fairings. Well, at least they keep the mud off the wings.
 
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