I arrived early this morning so that I could practice drilling the plexi. and steel tube with some scraps. This seemed to go OK so I took the canopy off of the frame and added machine oil to the masking tape to better see the mid-point of the tube. We had not been able to see the mark when using just the masking tape. The middle of the tube was clearly visible with a little oil. The oil trick was suggested by the EAA tech counselor, Vern Darley. When Claude came to help support the frame, I began to drill the plexi and frame with a #40 drill at 2 inch intervals. After a couple of holes, we felt that the drill bit I was using was not sharp enough so we made another trip to the hardware store. With the new bits, the drilling went better and we were able to get all the holes drilled without cracking anything. We had one thing in our favor. I bet it was close to 100 degrees in our hangar. The canopy to frame fit seemed to be OK with good edge distance etc. Tomorrow, we fit the frame back on the fuse with the canopy clecoed on and see how things line up. We then have to take the canopy off the frame and enlarge the holes to 5/32". I guess this is where several have cracked the plexi. We will use a Unabit so maybe we will be OK.
