Brief Description: Drilling the forward canopy skin
There is some description in how to put this skin in the original RV6 instruction book, but it lack so many details, there would be a lot of guessing if it would not be for others blogs that show their work. The first brave that embraced that project at the beginning must have scratched their heads a lot !
I think this is a complex skin to install simply because there are so many things that needs to be perfectly right for the canopy to operate well. One thing that I find frustrating is the forward edge clearance that is very hard to adjust. I go slowly filing the edge then reinstalling and trying. It would have been easier if the book would have said you needed 1/32nd clearance or something ... but I am learning !
The other thing that I do not know excatly what is the best install would be is about both side of that skin: should I let it hang over the fuselage side skin to help with air & water ingression or simply butt it against the top longeron and the rubber seal that I would put there would work well ... but this way it would be more difficult to seal the gap between the top longeron and the canopy skin. Definitely not sure of the best scenario would be.
Then I need to think about adding the canopy reinforcement kit but noticed that in doing that, I saw that it will be riveted directly in the area where I was planning to installed 2 small fans to defog the windshield and perhaps remove some heat behind the panel during a hot sunny day .
I do not plan to add much work in the up coming weeks ... too many things to do ... fishing trip, vacation & many pool party outside ... I will try to do a little bit, mornings mostly but it's the time of the year that one must recharge it's vitamin D and get read for the winter months !
