This was a pretty big day for the canopy–I started drilling the aft canopy to the fuselage. It feels like I’ve been adjusting the canopy forever.
The first thing I did was clamp the hell out of the roll bar after getting the window located.
I started drilling the canopy form the top of the roll bar and worked my way down. It’s important to keep in mind that you don’t want to drill into the roll bar. The holes in the roll bar get a tap drill diameter of #33, while the canopy is drilled to #30. It was pretty easy to feel the point at which the drill bit went from cutting plexiglass to the aluminum.
The drilled holes are shown in the image below. Drilling the hole pattern around the aft top skin was super easy compared to the roll bar.
This picture shown the fit between the forward and aft canopy sections. I still need to do a little work to improve the consistency of the gap.
This thing is looking really sweet.
