BUILDING THE BAGGAGE DOOR
The baggage door is not a complex piece to construct. After all of the metal fabrication and rivets that brought me to this point, this was not supposed to be difficult. A few angles of aluminum bracing, small lock mechanism, front and back skins, done. That was my impression the FIRST time I built the baggage door. That’s right – I built it twice. I’ll spare the minute details, but in short, when I went to hang my first door, it protruded out past the fuselage skin by 1/8 inch. It looked grotesque. Way outside of my comfort zone. It is also a really inexpensive part to rebuild, both in terms of money and time (and as always “inexpensive” is relative in the aviation community). Here are a few photos of how it turned out.
You can it runs flush to the fuselage skins and is evenly gapped all the way around. MUCH better than attempt number one. I also want to thank previous builders for their input on the flush hinge design. I used Ed Kranz’s design and layout that you can find over here on his build log.
The interior view is further confirmation of a nice even gap all around.
CHALLENGES ALONG THE WAY
I came across a few tough rivets to hit and wanted to share them. One of the aspects I love about the RV community is all of the sharing so I figured I would pass along a nugget or two I picked up along the way as well. Specifically, this is about the baggage door attachment frame. It is riveted to the top of the baggage area spar with a sizable rivet.
I wish I would have marked these, but you can see the two rivets with blackened tops. These are the main culprits of my angst. You cannot get a standard bucking bar in that space from the side or from the bottom. I ended up using a long, thin, tapered bar slid into the rear spar hollow area.
I slide this bar in, then when I elevated it with my fingertips, the sloped part matched up perfectly against the shop head of the rivet. It was a tight squeeze and a bit awkward, but it drove really well.
That should do it for the baggage door – on to the next section!