My goal for the day was to get the canopy hinge finally drilled.
I got the forward canopy section reassembled and fitted on the fuselage. I really want to this to be the last time I get this thing strapped down.
You can see I’ve got a good consistent gap along the width of the fuselage.
The purpose of this picture is to show that the Sharpie mark I made on the hinge is still aligned with the hole (upper left hole). The position of the hole seems very consistent. 
As the plans specify, I used a right angle drill to mark the location of the hinge pivot point. Getting these hole positions marked on the hinges was actually really challenging. I fed the pneumatics line for the drill through the hole in the firewall, but I did the drilling laying on my back in the fuselage. I was basically balancing my entire body on my back, which was contacting the wing box.
I used an aluminum block to function as a drill jig. Ensuring that the jig was clamped in place while the drill bit was centered on the pre-drilled location actually took some time. Messing this up would have been terrible.
Here are the holes in the hinges. This actually turned out quite good. A lot of builders have minimal clearance between the hole and the lug wall.
The canopy hinge is looking good with just the skeleton installed. Of course, I know the issues come after installing the skin.
Not surprisingly, the skin of the canopy hinge and the forward fuselage butt up against each other when trying to raise the canopy. I was hoping the changes I had made on the second attempt would have reduced this issue, but I was not to lucky. The image below shows the maximum open angle before the skins contact.
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After numerous attempts at removing material and checking the interface, I was able to get enough clearance between the skins to allow the hinge to move freely. The maximum gap turned out to be about .100 inches, which is about 3X greater than the gap specified by Vans. I wish this was a tighter fit, but this will work fine. I’m ready to move on.
The image below shows the opening of the canopy hinge before it contacts the clecos on the forward skin.
