Posted for "John Barrett" <2thman@olympus.net>:

Silvio et al,

Using the piano hinges has lots of advantages over the camlocks.  Piano hinges result in a much more attractive aircraft finish because there are no external parts to see; cowling removal and reinstall is considerably easier - you pull the pins to remove and shove them back in on install.  You still have to line up the halves on reinstall, but only at the forward end after which it's something like zipping up a zipper.  You already mentioned cost.  There are many, many builders who have taken advantage of this approach and the acceptance rate is excellent.  This observation holds true accross the kit building community including probably ALL brands of homebuilts, but I know of many RV builders, Longeze's, Glasairs, etc etc etc who have taken advantage of this improvement.  I know because I've sold hinges to many of them and have purposely looked for applications at airshows and flyins over the past 6 years.

You also might want to consider using graphite hinges rather than aluminum because they are lighter - they bond with the composite (you won't have to use a bunch of rivets that will come loose over time and will show in your paint job early on and will take a lot of extra work to install.) The hinges I refer to are Carbinge(TM) hinges that we manufacture.  We have them installed on many aircraft that are flying and several that have taken top awards at major EAA shows including Oshkosh, Lakeland, Arlington and elsewhere.  Some have many hundreds of hours on them.  Silvio, we even have them on airplanes in South Africa, Netherlands and Australia.

I hope you don't mind the shameless commercial plug, but if you don't know about Carbinge, it would be good to check it out before making a choice you'll be less satisfied with in the future.  Please see more about the product at my website; http://www.carbinge.com/

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year,

John Barrett, CEO
Barrett/Garrett Enterprises, Inc.
PO Box 428
Pt. Hadlock, WA 98339