Brief Description: Begin Adding a Bottom Console Access Panel
Siers has added a suggested change to the aircraft. He suggests adding a bottom console access panel. I would say this is not a suggestion, but manditory if the aircraft is to be possible to service correctly.I laid out a 4" wide access that is 17.5 inches long using the spar locations as the ends of the access panel. This was done with careful measuring and the use of a pencil to mark the aircraft skin. Once I was satisfied with the layout I used a Dremel tool with a Forney cut off disk to carefully cut along the laid out lines. The real trick here is to just cut through the aircraft skin. A chisel and hammer were used to get the section out in pieces. I have yet to do all the final clean up of the opening. However, I hit the correct location nearly perfect. The last thing done with this area today was to add a spruce reinfocement piece to the rear of this new opening. Several more pieces will have to be added to allow the attachment of the access panel.
