The "finishing kit" crate arrived.
|
Canopy, wheels, cowling, engine mount are here.
|
Unpacked and unwrapped.
|
The canopy frame (front and sides) clecoed to fuselage for preliminary fitti9ng.
|
... missing picture ...
|
Top-front skin and canopy frame clecoed. Ready for match drilling.
|
Underneath shot of frame showing join plate and rotation brackets.
|
Right-side frame extension. Canopy side bolts to this member.
|
Left-side of extension clecoed to main canopy frame.
|
Inside view showing reinforcement gusset.
|
Aluminum wedges need to be fabricated to properly join cover with sides. The red "magic marker" is used to track progress filing away the excess metal.
|
Finished wedges.
|
Canopy laid over frame. Allows us to get an idea of what gets trimmed away.
|
The view from the back.
|
Inside shot of front cover. Pins are installed through the rotation brackets along with the pin release mechanism.
|
The process now involves trimming front and sides of canopy to get a preliminary fit around the four sides and drop height to come close to the roll bar where the split will occur.
|
An acceptable "rough fit."
|
Roll bar is covered with tape and a separation line is drawn. Eventually the two separated sections of the canopy will meet along this line. This will require independently shaping each edge once a fit around the base is finalized.
|
A view of the separation line through the canopy.
|
More masking tape over the protective plastic covering. A cut will be made at this point using a die grinder.
|
At this point, considering the advisories from Van's, one starts to look for reasons to delay the cut. It turned out to be much less of a problem than first thought.
|
All taped down for final check and addition of cut line.
|
View from left-side rear of un-cut canopy taped to frames.
|
More marking, stalling, and second guessing. (not really)
|
The cut is completed. Even with a small cutting disk, the die grinder exhibited noticeable gyroscopic movement as the cut progressed and the angles changed. Tried to do the entire cut without stopping. The cut did turn out to be within an eighth of an inch all around the cutline.
|
Rear section. The red lines are rough outlines of the enclosing skin.
|
Rear section needs to be properly fitted at the roll bar and rear bulkhead before the curved sides are cut.
|
Two shots showing the overlying rear skin.
|
The canopy will bolt to the skin along this curve
|
A rear frame bolts to the back of the moveable section and mates with the roll bar. Spacers are used to maintain correct positioning.
|
The frame is clamped to the roll bar and the canopy fit checked.
|
Rear section is clamped to roll bar and clecoed around the back. Bolt holes need to be drilled to fasten section to roll bar.
|
Clamping arangement.
|
Bolt holes are finished. Final work on join line can now be done.
|
Getting close to final drilling and shaping.
|
Drilled and countersunk bolt holes.
|
Finished rear section. Edges were smoothed and everything checked before permanent installation.
|
????
|
????
|