Today I begin by riveting the front of the skin to the frame, but first I make all the shims. The riveting is quite difficult as the frame is still very sloppy and the rivets are sometimes difficult to reach.

Then I finish the installtion of the upper canopy lock. The washer needs to be grinded to fit and the split pin installed on the correct side to allow opening the correctr way.




Then I tackle the side guides (not included in the plans). On the right everything goes smoothly, but I will have to redo a left guide as it slipped during drilling.




And here how it works. The lug is guided into the fusleage hole by the side of the guide. With both guides installed the canopy closes very smoothly.

On the side of the frame there is a gap between the tube en the skin, so I fabricated six shims out of aluminium tubing. I found rivets long enough to do the riveting.

All the parts are primed in the morning and in the afternoon I begin riveting the canopy skin. It's not really an easy task, access is quite difficult. Some rivets can be squeeezd, some have to be shot. On the picture, the left row is done with pop rivets except the three on the ends which will be done when the canopy is on the fuselage as there is a gap with the frame. The middle row has no rivets for now as the reinforcement braces will be riveted there. The right row will be riveted later as some shims might have to be installed.




Then I fabricate two guides out of delrin. The canopy is somewhat floppy andduring closing sometimes it's difficult to get the lug into the holes. This guides will guide the lug correctly. Here is the picture with the guide's position relative to the lug, but the guide will be bolted to the rollbar.




And here the guide in front of the rollbar, the right side will be guiding the lug into the square hole.

Work on the canopy goes on. First all the elements get disassembled to allow for the cleaning of the frame. Some sanding is also needed, some places have been roughed up during the building process. The frame now needs to be primed again before the skin and skirts can be riveted.




Then I work on the rear window. I did all the countersink and enlarged all the holes. The holes are drilled larger than the screws to allow for plexiglas expansion under the summer heat. I also did a small cut on the rear. The only work left on the window is the adjustment of the forward gap with the canopy.




I the prepared all the parts that have to be primed.

Today's afternoon I got some work done on the window and canopy. First I get the window of the fuselage and drill the rear skin. I run into trouble when I vegun to dimple the holes as I had drilled them to large. I will have to use the next size of screws (approved by Van's).
Then I tapped the holes on the rollbar, it took some time as there are quite a few holes there.




Then I cut some backing strips to alleviate the stress around the screws at the rear of the window.




Then with Sabine's help we installed the latch lugs. The operation needs to spend some time in the cabin with the canopy closed. After some adjustments, both lugs where correctly in position. Here is one of them.




And a view from inside with the lock engaged in the lug.




I also installed the upper latch handle. This handle also allows to keep the canopy slightly open during hot weather taxying.