Door Trim

I installed a set of flush door handles on the outside of my doors to replace the exposed handles supplied in the kit.

I decided to make custom door panels to go over the existing door. This would allow the various depression in the door to be covered and out of view. The door panel was made with 5 layers 10oz bi-directional cloth. Laying the cloth with the fibers going 45 degrees to the panel, allowed the glass cloth to conform to the various bends of the door. Foam was placed in some of the depressions to provide a flat surface for the panel. The area where the door support is needed to be modified. To hide the hinge and its' attaching hardware and leave room for the support to move in, I made round depression in the door panel. I used racquetballs to make the initial "round" depression for the support clearance. The glass lay up was then cut in half and applied to the panel with epoxy and flox.

Once the panels were trimmed, Chuck did his magic to the door panels. He molded the window opening to match the window moldings for the back seat windows. He also made a contoured area around where the armrest would be installed. The contoured area would be covered with a wood grained panel. Chuck made a threshold cover to go over the lower door frame opening. This would protect the interior Ulta-Leather from getting damaged with entering and exiting the airplane.

Even though the factory door handles did what they were designed for, I did not think they would go with the interior design. My original idea was to use Cessna 210 door handles. They had a hockey stick look and could be blended into the armrests like on the C-210. After modifying a set of C-210 handles to work with the existing flush door latching mechanism, I found that the length of the handle would make it impossible to come up with a functional armrest.

I made a set of wood handles to attach to the lever supplied in the flush door handle's kit. Chuck then made a curving armrest that used the wood knob as the front of the armrest. The armrest attaches to the door with 3 #8 screws. An aluminum plate was riveted to the inside of the door with nutplates attached.

One of the big decisions was where to put the EXPERIMENTAL placard required for amateur built aircraft. The placard has to be in display at the entrance of the aircraft when passengers are entering the aircraft. I did not want to use the normal EXPERIMENTAL sticker used on home built aircraft. I did some checking with EAA and found that the letters had to be at least 2" tall. There was no regulation saying how long the word had to be or the font used. I experimented on my computer to try and size the placard down. After determining the size of the placard, Chuck molded an area in the top of the door panel for a wood placard to be installed with the word EXPERIMENTAL engraved in it.