A couple of Plane Around questions

The Plane Around products are very nice but instructions are MIA. Not that it's that hard to figure out, but I still have a couple of questions. The first is on the strut attach bracket. I'm thinking bolts would be more secure, at least on the inboard two holes, than countersinking and putting in screws. Anybody do that or have pireps on using screws there? Here's a photo of mine with bolts as I am drilling the outboard hole:



The second question is about their door pin guides. How did you guys using them get them positioned so the door is flush. I'm not wild about trusting the latch pin method Van suggests; if I am a little off then the guides will will also be off. Yet using the latch pins and doors to position them leaves me with no access to clamp or mark them. Anyone got a good trick to locating those guides accurately?

Hi Patrick, I have found the counter sunk screws to be sufficient after 250 hours. The whole area where the strut mount attaches tends to flex the fiberglass a little so I think the screws are not the weak point if anything were to break it would be the whole area where the strut is.

The method in the plans to create a pointed bolt works well from my experience. If you turn the bolt with a drill then you can be pretty confident the point will be in the center of the bolt. Once the pointed bolts stab the door frame and you know where the center of the hole will be, you can drill that hole, then stick the guide block on there and put a pin through it to keep it in place to drill the screw holes for the guide block. We had to sand our guide block a bit on the face that you would see if you were looking into the airplane from the end of the wing (the face of the block that the door would touch as it closes).

Hope that helps. Best of luck!

The location for the guide blocks are the same as the Van's instructions. If you have my pins you can grind the end of the 5/16 allen screw and use it to mark the cabin top. Remember the seal changes the location of the door. The bolt pattern is the same for the pin guides as Vans. Also, the bolt locations are the same for the strut attach bracket too. You will need to make a 3/8 spacer for the strut attachment. Van's instructions tell you to make a 1/4 spacer. You will need a 3/8 spacer out of the same material. I leave this to the builder since there are different struts used by builders and different O.D.'s for the strut attachment.

Feel free to call me with questions.

801-580-3737

Thanks both of you. After trying to come up with some sort of cat's paw clamp to reach in there and clamp the guides, I finally tried pretty much what Brian suggested. I cut the end of the Van's pins off, tapped for the 5/16" - 24 setscrews, and put a drop of paint in the end of each setscrew, which then marked the location in the door frame quite nicely. After drilling 7/16" at the mark, I test fit the door without the guides and only had to make slight adjustments; it was easy to not the direction of the adjustments. Then I used a pin for alignment and, pushing in the direction of my adjustment, clamped the guide in place for drilling. My door surface is perfectly flush at the latch points. I did have to grind down the outboard surface of the guides by about 1/16" (less, actually) to allow the door to seat flush. I suppose I could have avoided that if I had set the guides on the door itself inboard just a hair instead of flat on the inner surface.

Installing the angled pins was very easy but I had to tap them about 1/8" deeper because the setscrews protruded from the pin tube too much even though I tapped to the full depth of my tap. The finished product is super tight and very effective. I had to be very careful with length because I'm using the flush latches so I only get 90 degrees and to get full engagement of the pin in the closed position means I am very close to dragging the pins in the guides in the open position. I won't know for sure until I get the flush latch mounted but if it is a problem I may notch the outboard edge of the guide very slightly to allow the pins to pass. That would still leave the meat of the guide cone to pull the door in and of course the engagement area in the guide and fuselage bulkhead would be unaffected. I did some pull tests on the door and no slipstream at any reasonable speed will affect it; the Plane Around parts are amazing.

Speaking of that, I did try to latch the doors with only one pin in place (with no pins in, it is very apparent that it is unlatched). If the latch is closed to lock, the single pin engages so well that I cannot pull the door out or in the direction of the disengaged pin to the point where the door will open. At most, I could open it about half an inch, which I would expect to create a severe knocking in flight. Moreover, it took effort to get only one pin to engage; I had to deliberately set it at an angle to get it to happen (I could see that happening if a seat belt or strap were inadvertently outside). I'm not knocking the building or operational abilities of those who have had problems with the doors but I find the latch much more secure than the finger latch in my -6A tipup. I think the discussion regarding full engagement of the pins through the metal bulkhead members is right on. That said, I will remain cautious when this project finally moves into the flight phase.

Oh, and regarding the strut attach bracket, I didn't know it matched the hole pattern exactly but I was able to match drill #22 without damaging the threads and then enlarged the holes to #12 with no problem. My question was more regarding the clamping surface area of a bolt versus a countersunk screw in that area. So far, one person says screws are fine, so I may have raised a non-issue.

Researching this topic

and trying to understand why I want the PlaneAround strut attach brackets in the first place (other than that they're awesome like all of Sean's stuff and shut up and take my money). What's the drawback of the stock brackets?

I've read up on aftermarket struts, end fittings, 530N vs 600N, etc.

This will likely make more sense when I'm holding the pieces in my hands. Right now, I'm doing grind-and-fit on the doors after successfully gluing them together last week, but trying to look ahead a few steps by reading the VAF archives at work

It all depends on whether or not you're doing the McMaster-Carr door seal. Sean's brackets leave enough gap to fit around the seal. If you're using the factory seal, Sean's brackets aren't necessary.

Ah.

In that case, my plan (for the moment) is to do McMaster Carr self-adhesive seals that attach to the inner face of the door, not to the edge of the door opening. This is just based on my research here to date, but after months of thread-reading, it's probably my final answer.

So where does that leave me vis-a-vis the brackets?

I'm not sure of the exact seal you're talking about but if there is not a lip of the seal on the interior of the cabin door frame, you are good without the planearound brackets.