These are now pre-molded at the factory. We’ve cut the 5/8″ lip for the flange onto the fuselage, and sanded the door to fit. We have done some finishing work with Cabosil, filling the void between the hatch and the flange. This is accomplished by duct taping the cover and the pressing it down into the Cabosil and weighting it down until the Cabo cures.

Also, the manual says to install 4 screws to hold this down, but we’re considering options that would not have screw heads showing.

Here we’ve finally worked out a set of hinges that will allow the proper opening of the nose hatch. I was struggling to get the geometry of this right, so I fell back to plan B, I asked a girl. OK, not just any girl, a Cozy Girl. They have all sorts of really good ideas, and had already solved this one for their plane, so I got some great CAD drawings and tips from them, from which it was a simple task to finish up these snazzy hinges. Then I installed the factory latch, and a T-handle release mechanism. Here is the AutoCad file for the nose hatch hinges.

Nose Hatch Cover Rough Fit	Nose Cover Finishing
Forming the Hinge Bases	Cozy Girl Hinge Design
Jigging the Hinges in Place	Hinges Bonded into place to test operation
Hinge in place for Testing	Tada!
Well, would you look at that?	Factory Latch – very swank
Yup, that’s where it needs to mount!	‘Hood Latch’ Handle

Posted By: Brett Ferrell
Monday June 10th, 2002 at 12:53 PM

Categories: Fuselage
Tags: Building Fuselage