This is a view of the door from INSIDE the plane.

Circle - In fitting the door to the frame, we used one central point as our key point. Tuck it right up close to the fuselage tubing.

A - Once the key point fit well, we aligned the bottom of the door. We found that it fit best just above the rivet line of the bottom shell (see the 4th photo below). We have not attached the bottom shell yet, so the door actually "sat" on top of the cleco's in photo 4.

B - Notice how much overhang we had on the window where the hinge goes. The top of the hinge will be attached to the tube and the bottom of the hinge will be attached to the door window. So we have a lot to trim from the door window.

Extra view of key point.

Next we are going to attach the door to the front down tube. We will use a hole locator for this process.

A - put the rear of the hole locator into a hole on the front down tube.

B - put the front of the locator on the other side of the window.

C - with a mallet, hit the end of the locator front. Remove the hole locator and drill through the indent and into the hole in the front down tube.

This is a view of the door from OUTSIDE the plane.

Circle - This is our central key point.

A - Notice the door "sitting" on top of the cleco's of the bottom shell.

B - This is the front down tube / windshield rivet line. The top of the hinge will be attached to this line (not the window itself).

C - However, we used this window overhang for installing the hinge. We drilled through our "prototype" window right into the front down tube using the hole locator. The next photo shows how we installed the hinge.

Installing the hinge. This is the INSIDE of the door.

A - We attached the top of the hinge to the holes in our window that were attached to the front down tubing. That will put the top of the hinge where it belongs - on the tubing. The hinge loops are pointing up because they will be on the inside of the plane.

B (Ellipse) - Following the Earthstar documentation, we marked a spot so each pair of hinge holes will be parallel to the bottom shell.

C - We put our pre-drilled ruler on the door side of the hinge. We made sure our first hole matched the mark in the ellipse. We also used a feeler gauge tool to keep our ruler a set distance from the hinge loops so the holes would be centered on the lower part of the hinge.

Now we will trim the door window frame 'between' the two rows of holes so the window does not hit the hinge loops. Then we will attach the top part of the hinge to the front down tube. Pretty neat, aye?!

In this photo the door is hung in position. The top of the hinge is connected to the front down tube.