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