Started by welding the undercarriage sockets into their reinforcing collars - quite neat by my standards!Then a final ream of the sockets to clear any weld penetration and the undercarriage mount is complete.
Then decided to make a start on one of the doors. I'm putting off building the second of paired items so the aircraft has currently one horizontal stabiliser, one elevator, and now one door.
The door was constructed in situ using clamps and 1/4" spacers to position the tubing away from the door frame. This will allow the door to open freely and give space for some sort of seal to be attached to the edge of the aluminium door skin which will overlap the fuselage. As each piece of tubing was cut it was welded to the previous piece with as much of the weld as possible completed so that no change in dimension or shape would take place when final welding Once the complete door framework was completed it was removed for completing the welding and adding the hinge pieces to the front tube. Next step will be to add the hinges to the front of the door frame. The positioning of these will be critical to getting the door to shut whilst exactly overlapping the aluminium cladding of the front section of the fuselage.
