4/8/2008
ON THE GEAR!
Tonight my dad came over for a few minutes to help me get the sawhorses out from under the fuselage to lower it on it's gear. This was a sweet moment!!
Had to take a pic of me and my dad...
It didn't take any time at all to do this, and the evening was young at this point, and Brit was at the Kennel club for her classes. So after he left, I went back to work on the canopy frame.
First, I made a copy of the splice plate that joins the 631A ribs at the top.
I did this because there is no way to drill the holes on the 631A frame while it's on the airplane because the roll bar is in the way. One side of the frame had been drilled a while ago, so I cleco'd those holes, then drilled the other side.
Then I took the 631A frame off the fuselage to deburr the holes, and then rivet the splice plate on. There is an extra hole on the side I drilled first...I didn't think about the tooling hole being too close to where the measured hole falls. I threw a rivet in there so I don't have an extra hole showing.
I then put the 631A rib frame back on the canopy frame/fuselage to drill the pilot holes in the WD-725's to the 631A's to final size. The holes were left #40 size in case any adjustment was needed. Good thing I didn't drill these to final size earlier...they needed to be walked to one side. You can see the #40 holes are off slightly when I have everything all lined up.
Drilled to #30...
Then I took the whole frame off the fuselage to deburr the holes, countersink, and rivet the frame together. The two middle holes are for the latch piece, and they'll get drilled for AN bolts.
Actually, the two holes on the left are not supposed to be countersunk, but I realized that after I had countersunk them.
The frame is complete, except the skin, and the reinforcement kit.
It then went back on the fuselage to get clamped down again for canopy fitting...when it warms up.
Everything appears to fit very well, but I do have a small 3/16" gap at the top of the 631A frame to the roll bar-
This is a non-issue, and I expected I would have a gap by assembling the canopy frame as I did...it's not per the instructions. Sika will fill the gap with ease, and it will never be noticed.
I only have a few things to work on until it warms up a bit more...might do the canopy frame reinforcement kit, could install the snap bushings for the fuel lines, I'll need to install the brake lines when they get here...always a few things to do I suppose, but no canopy work for now.
3.75 hours