5-8-2020

Today I fabricated the cowling doors. As I had left a bit larger of an opening I was not able to use the doors provided in the kit so I made new ones from 0.025" aluminum. 

The process was fairly straight forward as I started by drilling the holes in the hinge half, then placed the door onto the hinge and held it with tape to make sure I had the fore and aft spacing correct, then marked the ends of the hinge half onto the inner surface of the door.

I then removed the door and hinge half and clamped the hinge to the cowl door aligning it with my marks and making sure the door butted flush up to the hinge section. Then it was a simple matter to back drill and cleco the door to the hinge half.

After deburring all holes, I placed the hinge half back on the aircraft, then clecoed the cowl door onto the hinge. I had made a few small bends over my knee to give the door a little shape but I don't think at this time that I will try for further forming.

After the cowl door was attached to the hinge, I strapped it down and started the slow process of marking and trimming the door to fit.

My next step will be to locate the holes for the camlocks. It's worth mentioning that I have the top and bottom cowling screwed onto the airframe rather than cleco's. This gives me enough rigidity that I am comfortable locating the camlocks holes in the cowl doors although I will not bring them up to size at this time.