Before I could get the canopy on the fuselage, there were a few minor tasks I needed to complete.
I got the C-723 Wedge Spacers riveted in place.
To define the split line between the forward and aft canopy sections, Vans has you mark the centerline of the rollbar with some masking tape.
Jennifer came over after work to help move the canopy to the fuselage. It was easy with two people. Looking good!
Vans gives you a shocking lack of direction when it comes to trimming the front end of the canopy. You are just supposed to start trimming back the corners until you achieve a good transition between the C-702 Forward Skin and the canopy. Based on the picture below, you can see it’s pretty unclear where the canopy transition should occur and how you should make it symmetric.
I did my best to tape up the forward end, but I didn’t was to cut it too close on this initial pass. This was all eye-balled for now. More material will need to be removed after this initial cut.
Here’s the initial fit along the front of the canopy. The corners will be need to be rounded quite a bit more to make this work, but this is a good start.
This is looking really badass. It feels like we are really moving on this project now.
