This is a fairly un-nerving step, unless you like cutting huge holes in very expensive things. Fortunately I’m beginning to really believe that I could fix a major fiberglass mistake. The instructions say to cut an opening 18 inches forward of the gear bulkhead (that’s an easy measurement to make on the outside of the plane!) to 8″ aft of the door cutout (at the top? the door slants, guys…). As you can see in this series of pictures, I propped the strake up off of a long folding table with some spare foam to fit into position, marked the lines, and cut the opening. I cut it a little small and filed it down, then rounded the inside radius for later glassing.
Also in this step, I sanded all of the primer off of the fuselage contacting surface areas, and inside the fuselage where the baggage area layups will go, as well as on the strake inside and out.
Opening the Pilot Strake Baggage Opening |
Baggage Opening |
Strake Spar Reference |
Posted By: Brett FerrellTuesday October 29th, 2002 at 8:20 PM