Covering, Inspection ports

A productive day today. I started off by finishing the remaining tapes on the fuselage around the cargo doors and left front door. Then made the inspection port frames and panels for the tail area and fitted them. The large ones surrounding the elevator will be fitted last after I finish covering the vertical stabilizer.

I fitted the rudder in order to establish where the rudder cables needed to exit the fuselage sides, then made openings and taped them. The openings can (just) be seen in the lower photos.

These inspection port frames were made from .025 sheet aluminium. The round ones take longer to make the way I’m doing it, but they ended up being quite robust.

The rectangular ones can be done with a cutting disk in an angle grinder relatively quickly. The nutplates took a lot of time to do. Another option is simply to use self tapping screws which would have been fine too.

Usually the frames are glued inside the fabric, but in these cases it’s not possible so I glued it to the outside and cut a covering piece to go over the top that wraps around to the inside.

The finished inspection ports. The lower port is big enough to easily get a hand inside and reach rudder cables etc, and fair leads. It also provides easy access for a spanner to the elevator trim bolts, and to reach any objects that may fall during maintenance - nuts/washers etc.

Vertical stabilizer fabric glued into place on the left side. I haven’t shrunk it yet. I’ll do the other side tomorrow, then a pre-shrink, then tape it.