Brief Description: Final fitting and windscreen fairing prep
The first order of business today was to address the stiff canopy assembly. I found that after attaching the side skirts with rivets, the effect was to pull the skirts tighter than they had been with clecos. No surprise there, but it was causing the forward part of the skirts to drag along the top of the longeron and prevented easy movement. This part of the canopy structure is pretty critical because any gap will be very obvious on the finished aircraft, but the lack of clearance will make the canopy almost impossible to move. I set out to address this with a sharpie and file by marking a straight edge and filing very carefully on both sides until the skirt just cleared the longeron. During this process I also took another look at the roller assembly…which up to this point had really been a “slider” assembly since it didn’t really roll freely. The problem that I had identified some time ago was that the force of the plexiglass on the frame caused the whole thing to bulge outward (a common theme on slider canopies) and made the nylon wheels slide along the outer edges of the tracks. I had purchased some ½” UHMW tape and installed strips on the outer roller tracks. I also removed a couple of washers that I had been using as spacers on each roller assembly and found the cumulative effect to be significantly better…the canopy now rolls much more freely.
I did find that there is still a challenge with the skirts catching as the canopy moves forward, and the right aft latching block no longer catches the hook, so I may need to fabricate a new one, but all in all, I feel like I’m about 95% of the way done with the canopy. Enough so that I spent the rest of the session masking the windscreen and canopy for fairing installation. Progress!
Ready to start sanding
Good idea, poor execution...will need to redo the lower edge
