Mr. Ed
MEMBER
PNW
I made paper templates for all fuselage opening/inspection covers. Then used those to cut Kydex blanks which I glued to a piece of melamine.
Did a carbon fiber lay up over the Kydex and vacuum bagged.
Cut the individual covers out of the panel, trimmed, sanded and drilled. The covers fit perfectly over the grommets which fit into the recess from the Kydex templates. These will get removed, coated with a UV protective and then painted to match the metallic silver fuselage color.
For those folks that noticed there seems to be no way to remove the cover over the aft stabilizer tube…you can see in this photo that the front upper part of the cover is a separate piece. That piece will be permanently attached to the grommet just to give a finished look. Also, yes I know that opening is upside down. My upper longeron is located at the top of the fuselage, not through the middle like Piper designed. So the aft stabilizer support bracket mounts under that longeron instead of over. To allow the elevator horns to be inserted into the openings the openings needed to be inverted. And, the rectangular cover had to be moved up to allow access to the control cable attach points. That rectangular opening is only on one side of the vertical fin.