This evening I felt like a challange, so after making the crimped L angles to go into the rear turtle deck, I measured and marked the location of the bolts for the undercarriage. These bolt locations are then filed out to about a 6mm radius and according to the instructions only 3.5mm deep, the aluminium the gear is made from is pretty hard and takes a lot of effort to file the slots. I am not sure who made my support brackets, but lets just say that the required depth was more like 6mm by the time I lifted the gear into place, tried it for fit, removed it, filed it some more and did it all again. All in all about 5 trial fittings before I got them to slide on. I am pretty pooped at the moment, the gear is probably twice as strong as it needs to be and I am guessing its weight is about 20kg. With the filing complete I measured and drilled the support brackets that hold the gear in place along with the rubber padding. Once its all bolted down it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. I have this strange feeling that the gear at the moment weighs more then the fuselage, but maybe its just my imagination.
Installing the support brackets for the undercarridge on the right side of the fuselage
