I spent may hours reviewing all the online pics and forum posts I’d saved over the years. Making gear doors seems a challenge. I’d even visited another builder and viewed his wonderfully complex mechanical door system. I wanted the opposite. How simply could I make a working set of doors? How can I avoid all the problems that other builders seem to have?

Pic 1 shows the area I want to enclose. Pic two, the sizing of my cardboard test pieces. You’ll note slightly wider at the front. The incoming or rather passing air in flight should help keep the doors open. I tried bigger trapezoid shapes but that might open another can of worms. I really only want to prevent flutter if the doors are parallel with the airflow and 0.4″ looked about right overall.

They worked really well with masking tape for hinges 🙂

The task – make doors!

Cardboard sizing

Testing doors