Doors

This was one of the hardest time consuming things to build on the ship.

After we finished our doors we learned the the resin RotorWay provides you with the kit for doing this attacks Plexiglas, so don't use it.

Here as well as the outer edges of the windshield we have millions of tiny cracks you can see when you wet it. Seems it's the hardener that causes this crazing to happen and makes the Plexiglas become brittle.

This is something RotorWay should have known long ago and made us aware of. I'm sure they have sold lots of replacement parts and maybe thats their goal, who knows.

To begin with the door stiffeners needed to be larger to fit our openings

and we had to completely remake the passengers pillar post because it didn't match the shape of the door stiffener nor did it match the pilots side pillar post.

We first redid the right hand windshield post and then we had to cut the door stiffeners apart to make them bigger.  After this was done we used a heat gun to shape the door stiffeners to the openings.

 Once we got the retainers to fit as well as possible

we placed the Plexiglas on it and marked it to size.  Then we trimmed the plexiglass to fit the door stiffeners and drilled all the holes.

At this point we bonded the two together with resin.

Time is critical or it will setup before you get all the rivets drawn up tight.

When you do this you have to draw the rivets just tight enough to pull the two parts together and stop well before you exert to much pressure and crack the Plexiglas.

When this is done you knock the rivet pins out of the rivets

and grind off the excess until it's flat but still has holding power.  When the resin is dried you'll notice it only bonded here and there, at least thats what ours did.

Some thickened resin would have sure been nice to have here as it would have filled all the voids and we would have alot more faith in the two surfaces being bonded together so we came up with an idea to fill the gaps and get out of putting that bondo around the inside.

We took a syringe with a large needle and sucked the resin into it and then filled the gap to the top of the door stiffener all the way around.  This had to be done in stages because it flows.

When they were done we went to masking the outer edges and put a fiberglass edge all around them like the windshield.

Before you can install the stall strip

on the front of the doors you must hang them and install your hinges inorder to get it centered between the two.

Hinges

A boo boo happened to us here.

We had the hinges completed and chromed to the patterns RotorWay provided but they weren't long enough to reach from the pillar post to the door so we ended up using a spacer we made from 1/2 inch Plexiglas to fill the gap until some later date when we get around to making new hinges that fit.

Handles

The handles worked out pretty well but if we placed them in the locations RotorWay showed us installing them it doesn't put them in the right places to draw them in to the body tightly.  We don't like the idea of adding more latches but it was the only safe answer we could come up with.

On our ship there needs to be more latches in the top and the bottom rear corners or they wont be sealed worth a hoot, especially on the passengers lower rear corner because of that big bump RotorWay is over looking in the seatback and floorpan molds.  It's so large of a gap you can put your hand in the ship.

What we did is replace the center rear with a T-type handle that locks to keep unwanted folks out of the ship plus avoiding having to cut a slot in the door for that swing arm to poke through. That allows us to latch the door from the inside as well as the outside.   The down side to our doors is we have to install them the first time and every time they have been off the ship for an extended time by heating them up and if we don't they will crack for sure, because they have a memory and go back to the shape they want to be naturally reshaping themselves to the openings.

A few years ago in Michigan a fellow

lost his life 

"NTSB # CHI00LA135

when what they think happened was one of his doors came off while he was in flight.

From what I get out of it the door came off and went through the tail rotor causing him to crash. There's a couple of rumors going around, one being the use of quick latch pins or quick release hinges and another about people forgetting to latch the doors prior to taking off. I've also heard from a couple people saying the door just poped open on it's own.

One such person was Stan maige of Texas.

He was alone on a cross country flight from his home town in Texas on his way to John Spurlings 2004 Fly In in Westport Oklahoma.

In mid flight well into his trip, the door just flat out poped open.

Luckily he was able to set down to deal with it.

He ended up sealing it to the helicopter with duct taped it for the remainder of the flight to Oklahoma.

None the less make sure it's on and part of your check list.

Vents

These we waited until April of 2004 to cut and install.

We never could decide on the best location for them but once we started flying in the 50 and 60 degree days we found we needed the doors on but at the same time we needed a way to cool the cabin off a bit.  To date we haven't gotten to try them out but were hoping we did good and installed them in good location.  After we got the door put back on the ship we noticed that we put them just behind the wind deflecter and we kind of think that the deflector will keep them from being very effective.   We'll let you know how it goes good or bad lol.

Door
Wall Racks for our enclosed trailer

Weather you put these in your hanger or your trailer they're definitely something your going to need.

We didn't come up with these until way later but you might as well plan on making some sooned rather then later or you might just get to make yourself some new doors lol. 

March 1st 2005

Just another Something Else
We Never Figured on lol

When the doors aren't on the helicopter they're a pain in the keester to have around.
Sometimes we kept them in the bus and other times we just leaned them against the walls of the trailers once it was parked.

 After spending several weeks making our doors we've always worried about breaking them from either stepping on or bumping into them because they are so fragile but hadn't come up with an ideal place to store them so we finally came up with these nifty storage racks to keep them in.

Stained and waiting for a coat of polyurethane

Pilots Side Door

Looking at the picture you can see that the stableizer block is alot thinner on this door,
thats because the pilots side door has alot more of a bubble to it then the passengers side door has.

Passengers Side Door

Finished and mounted on the wall

Quanity	Item	Total
6	1 X 3 X 4 Douglas Fir boards	$13.74
1	1 X 3 X 8 Douglas Fir boards	$4.59
2	1 X 3 X 6 Douglas Fir boards	$6.88
4	1 X 6 X 4 Douglas Fir boards	$24.24
1	American Cherry Wood Stain	$3.97
1	Satin 209- Wood Finish / Varnish	$3.66
1 box	1 5/8 inch Drywall Screws	$4.11
1	Stainable Wood Puddy	$5.94
1	Elmers Wood Glue	N/A
-	Sub Total	$67.13
-	Sales Tax	$6.21
-	Grand Total	$73.34

END