Today I was working on the new aluminum piece that goes on the belly just aft of the exhaust tunnel. I decided to remake these pieces because of some mismatched holes, and so that I could make the panel in two pieces. By making the left and right halves separate, I feel like I can have a closer fit around the landing gear shock struts, and I can add a dual-purpose aluminum angle joining and stiffening piece in the middle.
I started out by using the old one-piece belly section as a guide. I used .025 2024T3 stock to cut the flat blanks, then slowly started adding in the various perimeter shapes. I bent the very slight bend on my toy bench top brake, and then cut and trim to make the fit just right. Here are some pictures of the part clecoed in place.
