Robert Moore <<email>> writes:

Smart, Fast, Squishy!

The Nerf-Fairing

I recently bought a new GPS to upgrade my flying electronics a bit. I'm not usually a latest-n-greatest kind of pilot, but I decided there was enough difference between my old Garmin 12MAP and the almost-latest 76S to shell out a couple hundred bucks. The trouble was, it wasn't going to fit on the simple bracket the 12MAP shared with my Bruaniger vario. I was going to need something else.

I had been eyeing the various racing pods being manufactured, and even seen some fine examples built by highly skilled individuals. They were all made of carbon or fiberglass; materials I have very limited experience in manipulating.

I liked the idea of experimenting, to see if I could come up with an instrument pod that would be a decent facsimile of the professionally-built models, but for a fraction of the cost. Of course, it would have to be built with materials I could work with. I'm certainly no craftsman, and my tool supply is mostly limited to household power tools.

Ultimately, I came up with a closed-cell high density foam for the body. I bought a $10 battery-powered hot wire to cut the basic exterior shape, then sanded (yes, sanded) the block to its final form. I used my roto-zip to carefully carve out the interior for the instruments. An aluminum plate, stuffed into the cavity, provides the connection points for the instruments and bracket. Once the body was prepared, I sprayed many coats of "Plasti-Dip", a spray-on rubber coating, onto the foam to give it a smooth finish.

The Nerf-Fairing

Squishy!

The Nerf-Fairing does everything the professionally made units do. I can even rotate it to the vertical position for landing. Besides the major cost savings and my personal enjoyment in building it, the Nerf-Fairing has one particular advantage over the hard-shell models. It helps protect the instruments from impact damage while being relatively immune from damage itself. If I somehow manage to damage it beyond reasonable repair, I could spend another $30 to build a new one.