I finally decided to try my hand at some metal work again. It’s been a bit since I had to rivet or cut any aluminum, so I was a bit rusty.
A huge thanks to Phillip’s blog showing the steps to install the missing inspection door for the pitot tube. I certainly wasn’t as precise as he was, but mainly I measured the placement recommendations from the factory and traces the outline of the cover. From there I tried my best to find center. I knew it wouldn’t be perfect so I intentionally set the nibbler to be a smaller diameter than the cover. Once done cutting, I just used the file to get the hole to match the drawn outline. I did use a handy pull rivet style dimpler, which made things really easy to get flush rivets in there. Once everything was dimpled, I just drilled the holes for the rings and viola! So during my move to Colorado, I did have some damage to the vertical stabilizer skin - a nice hole on the side and some major scuffing on the skin. I ordered the new skin back in April and it finally came last week. I made sure I had some sharp drill bits and started de-riveting the skin.. ugh. While I have the skin off, I’m going to remove the VOR/ILS antenna since I decided to use the GNX375 (GPS only for approaches) instead of going for the more expensive option of the GTN650. That’ll save me about 3lbs of drag! ;-) Comments are closed.
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