Yea, its probably possible to do it without making a hatch, but its so tight and was going to be such a royal PITA, that I said "screw it" and made the hatch. Now we have all kinds of room and the blind nuts were relatively easy to get in there. We have the wheel centered in the well with the proper toe-in and we have somewhere around 1/2" or more clearance around the wheel on all sides...

Overall, I think cutting the hatches is going to be the easier way to go. Its going to make getting the gear in and out and routing air lines, etc., much easier. We're thinking of hinging the lower gear doors like the full scale, but if you wanted to go the route of just notching them for the gear leg to extend like the instructions show, you could simply glue the lower gear doors (with the notch cut into it) to the hatch you cut out and just make the thing one piece. Four pieces of ply (or polyply) on the corners and 4 screws, and you're all done...

Oh, and we did have to grind away some of the gear mount and also put two washers under the outer gear mounting bolts to get the gear properly positioned in the center of the well and to have it go far enough into the wing (with the required toe-out) to keep from interfering with the gear doors.

Bob