Baggage door started

I've been working on the baggage door slowly, whenever there's nothing else to work on.

This section is mostly straight forward - cleco everything together and final-drill:

Main door parts clecoed together and final-drilled
then the tricky part, which is making the hinge and drilling it on both sides such that the door is actually flush to the rest of the skin:

Marking the hinge holes for the door side

Marked hinge for drilling

I also used the common deviation from plans that involves cutting half the hinge eyes so that pins can be inserted from the center, allowing the whole hinge to be closer to flush with the skins:

Door hinge with 3 half eyes removed for pin insertion

Making the door hinge almost flush with the skin

Finally, the recommended method to drill the other half of the hinge to the fuselage involves modifying clecos so they fit inbetween the halves:

Specially modified clecos for the door hinge

then centering the door and match-drilling from the inside:

Door centered in place and held by tape
which, of course, went very wrong:

Accidental double hole when drilling the fuselage side of the door hinge :/
so I did the whole hinge over from the start, just reusing the door side holes and match-drilling the door to the hinge rather than the other way around. This time I was a lot more patient and careful in drilling the hinge frame into the hinge, so it went fine, and I countersunk the hinge:

Match-drilled and countersunk door hinge

The next steps are just deburring, primer and riveting.

I was also considering adding a baggage door sensor (microswitch or similar), but given how hard that'll be, it's probably not worth it.

Time lapse:



Total baggage door time: 5.5h

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