May 28, 2023     Canopy harness - (20 hours)       Category: Interior Finish

After finishing the avionics and testing all other connections I wires the canopy harness. I could not use Van's instructions exactly as the led strip I used was a little different and I wanted to make it span the entire bottom of the canopy rail. So instead of using their routing I decided to combine the canopy latch wires with the wires and then connected those all together at the molex.
I also could not use their mounting brackets that are in the canopy frame as they interfered with my G3X mounts. So I just used an Adele clamp to secure the wires together and then some RTV to give the connection wires a little bit of strength. These wires are all fairly easy to get to so should I have to replace them it would not be a big deal.
The canopy latch was a little bit of a pain. The hole was just large enough to get two wires though. I used some safety wire to “fish” them out and then it was fairly straight forward.
The only issue I had was that the switch was not fully engaging with the canopy latch pin. It was a fraction too short. So I built up the edge of the switch just a tad and now everything is working as intended.

  Jun 03, 2022     Canopy Part 2 - (45 hours)       Category: Interior Finish

After finishing the frame for the canopy, I installed it onto the plane. Turns out the canopy release system I fabricated with the fuselage was it satisfactory. There were slightly offsets which caused the pins to bind when trying to close the canopy. Although I was able to work it in, I elected to rebuild the piece with greater precision and it was amazing how much difference it made.

Once I got that installed properly I noticed the skins did not align perfectly with the fuselage skin. After trying to “pull” it outward (it was off by about 1/16”) I elected to remove it and rebuild the bottom bracket and include a shim of .020” skin which tucked in nicely between the frame and the inside of the skin and allowed the outside skin to sit perfectly flush. These details cost me hours of time but gave me great pride to see a perfectly flush surface between the canopy skins and the fuselage.

Next I sanded down the many high spot on the inside of the canopy lol where it meets the skins in order to help create a straight line torwards the end of the curve. This proved to be a long and tedious process but I read ahead and saw that we would be sanding down further on the outside so once I got the fuselage to sit flush I left it alone. I used straps (per the instructions) to hold the canopy flush with the canopy frame forward skin while I began the process of match drilling. Surprisingly the match drilling was simple and took only about 1 hour.

Once that was all finished we moved the canopy to the table and removed all the clecos holding it into the frame. The aft edge was a little too long to sand so I trimmed it with a dremel before sanding it to the final trim line. This was my least favorite and most nerve wracking activity, Glad I got it done with no “slips of the hand”.

Once all that was finished I decided to paint the interior. I had been putting this off for quite some time. I remove a lot of hardware and even some pop rivets that held the black nylon pieces so those would not get painted. It looks very good even though I have an “orange peel” finish which is a sign of an amateur painter, it's a nice uniform finish so I actually really like it. I decided not to sand it down with finish grit paper and add a top coat of clear poly, I like the finish I got from just yhe polyeurethane.

  May 09, 2022     Canopy part 1 - (20 hours)       Category: Interior Finish

This starts off with installing the canopy latch mechanism. This was fun to see a moving part go into the airplane but it was frustrating to install all those clevis and cotter pins in very hard to reach/see places. Lots of hardware in addition that pushed my skill set to the brink. Luckily it all went in. I'm not a huge fan of removing these for final paint when that part comes but I imagine if I did it once I can do it again. I did have some issues with one of the canopy latch pins binding so I ended up buying a reamer and reaming the 3/8 holes and it slides nicely now. I did remove the bushing in order to do this which required removing a bunch of LP4-3 pop rivets. It was nice to have a set of center hole drill bits for this purpose.

Once I finished that it was onto assembling the canopy frame. This was great to get back to simple metal work with clecos and drilling. There's a lot of drilling and deburring and all the skills required to get through the beginning of this build come back in handy. I enjoyed this thoroughly.

When the aft assembly came time to work I noticed that the roll bar attach brackets were slightly off. 1) They are 1 inch thinner on the inside so the outer edge lines up. The inside edge does not. 2) In order to set the outside perfect aligned with the roll bar I needed to use the frame Van's gives you to align them. This however caused the joining line to have a slight gap appear on the forward side only. I did t like it but I found out that this happens often and so I went forward and when I checked the fit it was almost perfect. It wasn't worth purchasing new parts in hopes of a better fit especially having read how some people who did this got the same result the second time around.

I did however crate a new splice so that there was no edge distance issues. I also beefed it up just a tiny bit since the joint wasn't flush anymore.

I still have a bit more prep to do before I rivet it all together so for now that is all I have to report

  May 04, 2022     Rear window - (15 hours)       Category: Interior Finish

This was a fairly easy process once I went and got myself more clamps and just got past the nerves of cutting into something so expensive. The rear window is about $600 to replace so you really want to take care of it.

I ended up countersinking a little deeper than perfect for the screws that go directly on the window (the ones attached to the roll bar). These have already been oversized after tapping the screw holes so it would be difficult to start this process over. Instead I bought some tinneman washers to sit inside the countersink (just like the skin does on the sides and aft edge) and it looks very clean and actually will be more secure against cracking in the future.

Next I will be building the canopy frame and then it's onto the main canopy piece.