Ten days of pure madness. This is the second sliding canopy frame. The first one got to me hopelessly distorted at the tube ends where the roller are attached. I got a new frame from VAN's at no charge. Trying to form the sliding canopy frame to fit the fuselage. First I found that the canopy frame was shaped unevenly at the two sides of the fuselage. One side followed the fuselage deck shape the other did not. It was wider by a good 1/2" to 5/8". I finally traced the outline of the fuselage sides under the canopy on a thin plywood sheet approximately 4'x4', and then trimmed the plywood along these lines. The pictures clearly show the difference. Being pretty green at this it took many tries to bring these side dimensions into shape. After this nightmare I found that the front bow at the roller positions was also too wide by larger than 1/2". To bend this back I had to rely on Bill Arnold's strength. After trying different promising tricks finally Bill's shear strength did the job. Now that this problem is solved I found that the back of the side bows ended up outside the fuselage skin by about 1/8" to 3/16" at both side of the fuselage (see Entry Order 531). To solve this problem I devised a clamp jig that made everything, if not easy, more doable. This can be seen on the picture at entry order 532 and 533. With this setup I was able to adjust any of the bows without affecting the bows that I wanted to leave as they were. I wish I thought of this at the beginning, I would have saved many hours of suffering. Live and learn. Whoever invented this canopy frame must have been a diabolical fellow. His only thought must have been to drive everybody who came in touch with his invention mad. It took me 10 days because after about one hour I was so frustrated I just could not continue with the job at hand. Finally things look reasonably good. On to the plastix canopy.
