Back from a one week cruise to Mexico and man I did not want to get off that ship.
Was way too relaxing and fun!!!
But back to reality....
So I'm going off topic for one posting to give some updates on the work we're doing to the King Air////
In the last few twin engine airplane builds that I did with Cliff, we had some issues with nose gear doors showing a big gap when opened. This was due to the curve of the nose of the plane where the front of gear doors are at and using the gear door hinges that were out there.. We didn't want this on the King Air so I had to do some research.
What I found was that on the real plane the doors did not open to a full 90* angle and instead they were angled inward when fully opened, like so:
So with some measuring and some drawing I came up with hinges that allowed the angled setting and yet be fully closed. (I really wish I had my Designer CAD program working).
I couldn't use any of the production door hinges as the pivot point needs to be high and the angle of the hinge glue pads needed to be at a slight angle.
Here's the drawing:
This was drawn to scale and took into account the thickness of the hull and gear door widths:
To take into account the angle of the doors when fully opened I also needed to make sure the doors would be flush with the opening when fully closed:
Here’s my first failed attempt: (Tried soldering aluminum but it was too thin and I got it too hot)
The cut pieces: ----------------------The melted pieces:
Second attempt at bending aluminum.
The pieces cut: ------------------ The pieces bent, drilled and assembled:
Not perfect, it worked but was a little flimsy.
Third attempt with some aluminum angle stock:
Starting point: --------------------- Patterns glued and cut out:
This third attempt was perfect, was stiff, looked good and worked great.
Cleaned up, drilled and assembled:
One side with hinges glued to the fuselage and the gear doors clamped with the door closed:
Side view with the door open: (Notice… there’s no gaps)
Front view with the door open:
I still have a little tweaking to do to get them to fit perfect but the dimensions are pretty close to final.
Will work with Cliff to get this to the factory and then back to the 737.
Sorry again for the off topic post but thought you guys would like to see what I did on the King Air.
Heading to the shop Sat and hopefully get both sides working.
I bought some door sequencers so the doors open before the landing gear drops. Will have to wait and see how this goes.
back to the 737 in a couple of days....