More Doors - Almost to 10,000 views!

Haven't posted an update this week since we got the R door glued and situated on the fuselage to cure. Really, we haven't done a whole lot more with the plane other than repeating the same steps with the L door, and then removing both doors for an initial trim.

L door glued and clamped in the same manner as the R door previously

Heat lamps set up on the L side of the plane

If I could do this over again, I might recommend increasing the number of clecos holding the door to the fuselage, especially around the most pronounced part of the curve from the side to the top. I tried to keep the same spacing as with the fuselage side skins (which is around ~4" spacing) but around the curve to the top I'd recommend more. If you look closely at the raw, untrimmed doors, they developed a slight crease at every point where the cleco held it tight, and I feel like these would be less pronounced if there were more clecos to spread the load. It shouldn't be a problem though, once the doors are trimmed to size most of the creasing will be trimmed away, and whatever remains can easily be filled. But still... something to consider.

Other than that though, We've gotten about 30-40% done with the initial trim for the R door, and the L door hasn't been trimmed at all yet. We'll get to that as time permits!

In other news, we're nearly to 10,000 views of this blog! Dunno if 10,000 hits in just under two years really counts as a "high volume" site by most standards, but we're still pretty humbled and amazed that we've come this far and have been able to share our journey with a number of folks from all over the world. Google Blogger statistics tell us that we've had visitors from not only North America but South America, Europe, Africa, Russia, China, Australia, and more! Truly awesome.

So, since December represents the "season of giving" and we feel like being a little silly, we'd like to reward the 10,000th visitor to our blog and send them something from our shop. Don't get too excited now, it's not going to be anything of too much value, but we'll try and make it meaningful in some way, and it will certainly be RV-10 related! So, if you're reading this page and the "Visitors" counter on the right says exactly 10,000, send me an email at [redacted] and let me know. If you can attach a screenshot or something that would be even better, but I realize that can be difficult at times. Honor system applies... no cheating!

Hopefully this works! If not, well, happy holidays from us both anyway... and stay tuned for more fiberglass and door work!