Now the hinges are on I made a couple of test doors out of laminex. A step up from the cardboard ones eh? Pic 1 shows the plan. I’m using the same spring specified for the plans manual trim system on the Long-EZ. I’d bought it a while ago but I’m going electric trim instead. I did buy some mouse traps and pulled out the springs for a few ideas I had. This is experimental aviation after all.

I also had some brackets left over from making the nose lift cover. I grabbed the hot glue gun and started to try things. Pic 2 is what works… and works well.

I tried the piano wire hoop to hold the doors open but it turns out that this heavy trim spring does it beautifully, no piano wire (or mouse traps) required. Another thing is that unlike other builders who have attached the spring to some spare hinge placed lower on the doors, I’ve moved that point up a bit closer to the opening. I also wanted the spring removable for maintenance and tweaking the tension as required.

Pic 3 shows how the spring hangs with out the gear. Just a fraction shorter than this loop is nearly perfect in terms of tension.

Oh yeah, see on pic 2 something hanging off the wheel bolt? I’m playing with ‘auto wheel straighteners’ This is just a test. Someone smarter than me thought of it. I have a concern that the wheel can be cocked, particularly bouncing on a rough grass strip on take off and can then end up cocked to one side. (ask me how I know about this) That would smash gear doors when it retracts, so I’m looking to these ‘straighteners’.

Test pieces

It works!

Spring loop placement