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[February 11, 2008]


Today I snagged a Garmin GTX-327 digital transponder. My main avionics stack is now complete, with pretty much just the EFIS's left. Giddy up! When I left off yesterday, I was having issue of the skin bowing downward when the canopy frame was on the fuselage. I wanted to see if that happened when the canopy frame came off.


Nope, everything looks good here.


While I had the frame off, I made a note of a slight buldge on the skin, so I filed the side subpanel flanges down slightly.


Once I fit the frame into the fuse, it was much better this time. I used a mallet to raise where the gooseneck hinge brackets are, hence pushing the skin up slightly.


I still have a fit issue in the middle, but everywhere else it looks great. I am going to move forward with it looking like this. I can always put a lightweight stiffener in later.


With the top skin completely flush (in fact, it was a little below the forward skin), I drilled the C-614 joiner plate to the canopy frame.


While I was drilling, I had the clamps in place like so.


I removed the clamps and took a look at how things remained. The right side stayed perfect.


And so did the left side. I am pretty happy now.


I went and drilled the rest of the holes to #40 on the frame. This diagonal run is just terrible - there is a pretty huge gap between the bottom of the skin and the joining frame metal. I will have to come up with some sort of spacer probably.


Finally I backdrilled the top portion that interfaces to the two hinge brackets. Once this was done I took the canopy frame off, took the skin off and got rid of all of the chips that had accumulated. I also took the bottom blue vinyl off to make the fit as accurate as possible. I put the frame back on the fuse and the fit was a little off. It was late and instead of being mad knowing I had a bad fit, I decided it was better thinking that it can somehow be fixed ;-)

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