|
 |
||||
I had to drag the propane heater out and get a refill on my tank today. The electric heater just isn't keeping up with how cold its been. I am amazed at how fast this bugger brings up the temps in the garage. 75 in no time!! This puppy will be key when it comes to cut the canopy.  Next on the agenda is to drill a 1.5" hole on the aft side of the canopy frame. Notice that the crosshairs that indicate where the center of the hole is are about 1/16" from the tooling hole. Nice going Vans.  With a little skill and fineness, I used the fly cutter in the drill press to make the hole. I just needed to clamp everything down to keep the flycutter from using the tooling hole as the center.  Voila.  Next was drilling the joiner plates. These go on the inside of the canopy frame. Van's give these to you already cut, just not prepunched. I drilled out one of them and then backdrilled the other to save some time.  Next I measured the width of the fuselage to see how it compared with what Van's measurement was. From the width, you have to subtract 6/16" to account for the thickness of the angle that goes between the outboard edge of the canopy frame and the side of the fuselage. My final measurement came out to be 1/32" longer than what Van's called out. I'll take that! I then got a piece of long angle (the stuff I used for the rudder trailing edge) and clamped some angle to it to represent the width the canopy frame needs to be.  See....42 3/16" was the width I needed to shoot for  With the side of the canopy frame sitting against my template, I looked at how everything fit. The top was too tall (it needs to be something like 17 19/32")  The left side it at a slight angle.  So is the right side.  To be able to clamp the canopy frame down, I took a piece of MDF and trimmed it about 1/4" from a traced line. This MDF sheet is perfectly flat and will work well to make sure the canopy frame turns out as good as possible.  The next thing I need to do is trim the top of the frame back to achieve the proper height. I didn't want to do it tonight and risking anything. Start fresh tomorrow and get her done!
|
|||||
|
http://RVplane.com |
Last Modified: October 5, 2024 |