Sunday April 10, 2022
Canopy Frame Priming and Riveting (Canopy)
4.1 Hours

Today, I started by prepping and priming all of the parts of the canopy frame where they were going to overlap once riveted.

Then I squeezed the rivets fixing the side skirts to the frame.

I think I had previously mentioned the gap here between the frame and the skin. This is super common. I put some blank rivets in the skin on the outboard few rivets here and took a look.

The curve was still a bit off.

I ended up putting a total of 5 blanks. I also put a washer between the skin and frame on the inboard most rivet. This way the curve flows more naturally. I will probably fill in this space with some epoxy/filler mixture.

I finished all of the skin to frame rivets. Most of these were bucked. A few are blind rivets (skin to the tubing).

The braces are also riveted in place.

I put the panel in the plane and then put the canopy frame in place. The gap isn't terrible, but I think I do want to fill it.

Another shot just for fun.

Earlier this week I put in an order to Stein for an ELT and the autopilot mount for the pitch servo. These two items, plus some conduit to the tail, should be all I need to install before I rivet the aft top skins in place.

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