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This is the first part to be assembled and it’s pretty basic stuff. The frame and landing gear is 4130 Chrome Moly steel - very light and very strong. It is gas welded at the Rotorway factory in what looks like a very sturdy jig but even so, it still suffered some distortion from the heat of the welding process. Nothing too radical though. Landing gear was assembled and taken off again and I drilled all the necessary holes that I could think of at the time, including 1 mm holes in brackets for bolt wiring, I didn’t drill the seat belt fixings. I thought it made sense not to make any holes in sealed tubes, unless they’re plugged, to prevent grit getting in. I followed the book pretty-much for the lower engine mounting frame but I had to heat and reshape one of the legs to get it to line-up accurately.
I’d read all the pros & cons of paint versus powder coat on airframe components. We have our own paint shop here at Redlands and I have been using a local blaster/powder coater for 12 years so I would have been comfortable with either. I decided to go for a light grit blast followed by a thorough rub down with 120 grit production paper, then a light etch primer and metallic silver Powder Coat. I spent the day at the plant overseeing the process to make sure I was happy at each stage.
I chose also to blast & powder coat the skids the same colour as the frame. Polished ali looks nice but I figure there’s enough routine maintenance on this ship to keep me busy without re-polishing the skids every couple of weeks!
And it all fits in a Suburban!! (Incidentally there are currently around twenty eight 162Fs in UK and less than a handful of Suburbans
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And here it is with the landing gear, controls and cables fitted
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