Baggage Door Frame

We've decided to add a baggage door to the aft baggage area.  After much thought and experiments in accessing the most rearward baggage area, we came to the conclusion that getting to that area without a side access door would be most difficult.  We did a search of the WINGSFORUM and FACEBOOK groups to get ideas on how others have implemented the door.  There are so many different implementations and we decided to take the ideas we like and do our own thing.

We will be adding 3 aluminum tubes, two square tubes and one round.   The square tubing will be used to form the outer side opening.  The top longeron and side stringer will form the top and bottom side opening.  The round tubing will form the bottom inner edge of the opening and along with two of the side stringer standoffs it will neatly close off the gap between the baggage area and the outer fabric skin.

The round tubing was cut and ground/filed to shape.  The two square tubing pieces are extremely irregular and is taking quite a long time to get into shape.  We had to restart the two pieces due to an issue getting them to nicely align with fabric.  More works still need to be done getting them to the correct shape/length.  Hours: 5

Left Door

We completed the frame for the left door by repeating the process we used for the right door.  All parts were deburred, cleaned, and the joint areas were lightly scuffed.  The parts were then epoxied and riveted together to form the outer door skeleton.  Hours: 1.5

More Door work

We adjusted all the brackets on the left (pilot-side) door  so that there would be an even gap around the door.  Next, we disassembled the right door, and then deburred, scuffed, and cleaned the separate pieces (tubes and brackets).  We applied epoxy at all the joints before installing the aluminum tubes back on the brackets. We installed one rivet (inside rivet) at each joint, but initially did just a partial pull on the rivets so that all pieces were still a bit loose.  We placed the door back on the fuselage and taped it in place to make sure everything was lined up correctly, and then did the final pull on all the rivets.  Excess epoxy was cleaned up and smoothed.

Moving back to the left (pilot) door, we disassembled it, then deburred and scuffed the ends, and cleaned the pieces.  Still need to epoxy and rivet this other door.

So now we have the frame for the right (passenger) door completed, and are close to completing the frame of the left door.  Hours:  5.0 

Right door riveted and epoxied together

Doors

We started work on the two doors for the plane.  The doors have frames that are made from aluminum tubing which slides over steel corner brackets that were provided by the factory.  The instruction manual did not provide good guidance on building the doors, but luckily there were some good tips already posted on the wingsforum that helped out.  Pictures from several other builders also helped point the way.

To set the gap around the doors, we first taped spacers that were approx 3/16 inch in height to various spots around the fuselage door openings.  We used pieces of tongue depressors as these spacers (a stack of 3, which was close to 3/16 inch).   We taped the door corner pieces in place with painter's tape, and then measured the distances between the corner pieces to determine how long to make the aluminum frame pieces.  We cut several 1/2" aluminum tubes to length, then deburred the ends. The door frames are made primarily from round tubes, except for one piece along the top that is made from square tubing (to accommodate the hinge).

We quickly found that the corner brackets for the door did not quite have the correct angles for a good fit on our fuselage.  After consulting the web, we found that this was a common issue and that "tweaking" (i.e. bending) the corner brackets is needed to get the doors to fit nicely in the openings.  We worked on the passenger door first, bending the brackets as needed so that the angles of the door fit perfectly within the frame.  We had some difficulties with this at first, but then settled on a nice method where we first drilled a hole in a piece of dense wood (we used a piece of Ipe wood left over from a deck project), clamped the wood in a vise, inserted one end of the steel corner bracket into the wood block, inserted a long screwdriver into the other end of the bracket for leverage, and finally bent it slightly as needed.  Several iterations of this process were used until each bracket was bent to the correct shape.

All the brackets for the right (passenger side) door were adjusted for a good fit, but we still have some work to do on the left side.  Hours: 6.0

Michael gently bending one of the corner pieces.

Spacers and alum door tubes held in place with blue tape

Fuel System Redo and Land Gear Fabric Work Thoughts

Wow,  now that the fuselage is back in the garage Ed and I have been giving a lot of  thought on various things.  First, we were never happy withe the flares on the fuel line runs so we decided to buy a new, highly recommended, fuel line flare tool.  We removed all the old fuel line and started running the new fuel lines.  But after some more thought, we are now planning on a more radical change in the fuel line routing and incorporating the Andair gascolator into the run.  We are currently in the planning stages on the new runs.

We are also thinking about adding a baggage door to the side of the fuselage.  Since the baggage area is so deep, having a side access door has been highly recommended by other Highlander/SuperSTOL builders. Like the new fuel routing we are currently in the planning stages on this.

And finally, we knew this was coming and the "kinda" planned a little, but we now need to give serious thought on how the fabric will be done in the area of the landing gear.  Access holes though the fuselage will need to be made so the solid Grove landing gear can be rune through the fuselage.  The mounting bracket for the gear is causing a lot of grief.  We've how come to the conclusion that some additional non-structural parts will need to be added to support the fabric work.  Then once the fabric work is done, some type of fairing will need to be constructed to cover up the holes.  We are also concerned about cold air infiltration, so that is going to take some more thought to overcome.

So not a lot of physical work was done, but a lot of time has been put into this effort.  Hours: 4

Some additional structure being considered

Prototyping structure with fuel line and hot glue