Eugene RC Aeronauts

Here is a Yak 54 that had the landing gear ripped out from a bad landing.

First I have cleaned up the damaged area and cut back the existing covering, to begin deciding how exactly I will go about doing the repair. Because of the way these are constructed, to repair this truly correct, one would need to break the fuselage down all the way back to the empinage (or behind the canopy) to rebuild with whole pieces. This is a bit extreme, so I will try to find an alternative to repairing just the undercarriage area, leaving the rest of the airframe in tact.

I decided to cut out the area I need to replace from the new fuselage sides and laminate the new area onto the existing fuse sides.

I start by laminating the two fuselage pieces together. Once cured, I start to line out the area of the sides that I need, leaving enough area to get a good lamination to the existing fuse sides. This will in the end, make the new cut area staggered off by the 1/8 inch or so, but the construction of the rest of the pieces really rely on the alignment to the front/back notch's, rather than side to side.. if that makes sense. Bottom line is, it wont effect the way the rest go's together.. or at least, not enough to create any issues.

Here I have the new piece's cut out and ready to start fitting. A lot of the glue needs removed from the fuselage area to get a good surface to laminate the new pieces to. After some trimming and matching notch's, the new fuselage side portions are ready.

With the new fuselage side portions fitted, next I begin to dry fit the rest of the undercarriage pieces to check alignment. So far no issues at all, and everything go's together just fine.

Next I tear it back down, and with everything fitting perfectly, I begin to glue it all up.

With everything glued up, its time to begin some assembly. Landing gear is installed with the aluminum angle stock.

I noticed the motor box was not very well bonded from the original build, so I also cleaned this up and wrapped the outer area with some 1/2 oz fiberglass cloth to prevent it from separating in the future.

Finally, I have cut new stringers, and added the balsa sheeting between the gear and firewall area.

The wing had a little puncture from the wheel pant I believe, so that gets repaired too, and on to covering

And covering finished, ready for Dwayne to get his gear installed, and get her back in the air!