I thought that I'd never get back to the hangar to work on my plane. It's been 2 months and it really flew by. Work mostly kept me away, but really there was a little avoidance too. I did an initial fitting of the sliding canopy frame 2 months ago and was excited to be coming along so well. But, after the excitement came the realization that the frame was badly warped and was going to require a lot of work to make right. It was pretty discouraging. I really didn't know how to tackle it and a busy schedule kept my mind off of it.
I finally just decided to take the bull by the horns and go for it. My approach wasn't elegant, but I figured I would make the best of it and buy a new frame if I totally screwed this one up. My solution was to use a conduit bender! It fit the frame nicely and I could just use the concrete hangar floor as my bench. So, between the bender (tightening bends) and my feet (opening bends) I wrestled with the tough little frame until it fit pretty good. That was 15 hours of wrestling, cursing, and sitting slumped in the corner staring at the floor. I've learned a lot about the "black art" of fitting canopies, but have a long way to go.
At this point I have the frame fitting nicely. I've got the aft track installed and the side rails cleco'd in place. Next thing is to dust off the canopy itself and start cutting..,
