Brief Description: Cutting the flap push rod holes in the fuselage
If I thought trimming the flap was a time consuming process, cutting the holes for the flap push rods was worse. The instructions on how and where to cut the holes are nonexistent. All the instructions said was I needed to cut a hole in the fuselage skin and enlarge as necessary to avoid interfering with the push rod motion. The only picture I had was the first picture shown below...notice the lack of any hole at all. Thank goodness many good builders did this process before me and I was able to find some pictures like the two I have below so I had some idea what to do. In order to retract and extend/retract the flap through its full up-and-down motion, the push rod has to clear both the side and bottom of the fusleage...so there is a oblong-shaped hole in the bottom and a mushroom-shaped hole in the side that are contiguous. You can sort of see this in the second picture. The 3rd picture shows the flap retracted. Shown is the right flap...this was the second attempt...I am too embarassed to show a picture of the left side. Oh well...nothing a little patch, a couple rivets and some bondo can't fix. You can see this attempt turned out the way it was supposed to.