Firewall flange adjustments: 3 hours

• Used the dead blow hammer and a shaped wood block to further "tap down" the firewall flanges
• This took several cycles of adjusting, reattaching the skin, checking fit, removing the skin, adjusting, on and on...

Making adjustments:

Canopy structure and upper forward skin: 3.7 hours

• Drilled hole for AN4 bolt through roll bar and canopy brace. Started with #40 and slowly worked up using the angle drill with good results.
• Used the angle drill to drill lower holes in canopy brace using reinforcement angle as guide
• Ground down ridges on fire wall flanges and did a slight "tap down" with the dead blow hammer per Vans tech support advice
• Re-installed upper forward skin - fit is much improved but not there yet

Canopy brace ready to drill:

Bolt in place:

Drilling canopy brace flange:

Canopy structure: 4.9 hours

• Trimmed and fitted spacers for roll bar bolts - very close tolerances, took a lot of time
• Double checked canopy brace position
• Removed upper forward skin
• Temporarily bolted roll bar to fuselage - used CA model glue to glue the washer and nut on the aft spacers - worked great
• Researched sliding canopy info online 

Roll bar bolt spacers allow the roll bar fasteners to "clamp" the longerons:

Canopy frame work and instrument panel check: 3.3 hours

• Test fitted instrument panel - I received the panel from the CNC cutter and I'm not very happy with it. There seem to be some discrepancies in the way the file was translated. It looks good from a distance but will require some work to make right.
• Adjusted forward roll bar pilot holes for exact fit 
• Drilled above to 3/16 then #13
• Drilled canopy deck
• Trimmed canopy brace to length (part between roll bar and center rib)
• Trimmed canopy brace flange
• Trimmed roll bar bolt flange to follow canopy deck - this took quite a bit of time

Looks good but needs some work:

Working on the roll bar:

Test fitting canopy brace:

Roll bar work: 2 hours

• Used a needle file to adjust the location of the aft roll bar pilot holes to just clear the longeron
• Enlarged aft canopy deck holes to 1/4" using roll bar as a guide

No photos today.

Roll bar: 2 hours

• Located and drilled pilot holes for roll bar bolts - very tight tolerances

Initial #40 pilot holes for roll bar bolts:

Roll bar clecoed in place with pilot holes:

Forward fuselage, vent brackets etc.: 5.5 hours

• Finished rough cutting and smoothing vent / 12 volt / control brackets left and right
• Deburred, smoothed, dimpled forward top fuselage structure
• Re-assembled above structure and clecoed skin on using 3 ratchet straps - the front corner of the skin is not matching up very well so I emailed Vans for suggestions.
• Started locating roll bar position
• Made a very small adjustment to the roll bar  - it took a long time with a lot of small tweaks

Vent brackets are pretty much finished:

Tightening down the skin:

Not a good fit here:

Or here:

Painting and misc: 3 hours

• Prepped and primed roll bar and canopy frame
• Bought defog fan mounting hardware and checked fit
• Removed paint from some interior parts needing repainting
• Started work on finishing left and right custom brackets for air vents and 12 volt power etc.

Initial vent brackets I designed and Front Panel Express cut out. Their process worked great. Great quality!

Priming roll bar and canopy frame:

Working on vent brackets (if my cad software skills were better Front Panel Express could have done this!):

Defog fan cut out and misc: 3 hours

• Finished defog fan cutouts
• Prepped canopy frame and roll bar for painting
• Re-organized shop area
• Deburred, edge rolled and dimpled parts of forward top skin

Dimpling top skin:

Defog cut out and interior painting: 3.5 hours

• Prepped and sprayed some interior panels with catalyzed gloss clear epoxy - 2k Aerospray by Eastwood. This product mixes in the spray can so very easy to use and no clean up.
• Worked on left defog fan cutout.

This clear epoxy is supposed to be very tough:

Defog fan cutouts almost done:

Defog fan cutouts: 3.3 hours

• Received two 12 volt 92mm fans for defog
• Finished fan cutout template
• Center punched screw holes and traced template onto skin
• Used unibit, dremel, nibbler and files to make cutouts - right side finished

Cutouts in progress:

Tracing template:

Misc errands and painting: 4 hours

• Dropped off my instrument panel blank with a local CNC machine shop to be cut out
• Picked up new horizontal stabilizer kit and Aeroled nav strobes package from Van's
• Prepped and primed canopy parts and controls sticks what had powder coat removed.

No photos today.

Defog fan cut out design: 3 hours

• Worked on defog fan cutout design
• I will be using two 92 mm fans for windscreen defog. This is similar to what Vans uses for the new RV-14.

No photos