7/7/2008
I ordered the interior today! Abby from Flightline Interiors will be making it for us. Our colors will be tan and red.
Tonight I worked on the canopy side skirts. These are flat pieces of AL sheet that cover the WD-725 side rail and the canopy bubble sandwiches between the skirt and the side rail.
First, I installed three screws per side to hold the bubble in place.
The screws will go on the outside of the skirt, but for drilling the skirts, these three stay inside the skirt.
I then taped the skirts in to position, and marked the trim lines. The top (marked by the arrows) will be trimmed to match the top of the side rail and the aft top skin. The "ear" will also be trimmed from the front canopy frame skin.
Then I measured and marked all the rivet holes, and drilled those. I didn't take a pic of the grid, but it's there. Also notice the aft end of the skirt will be trimmed to match the angle of the aft top skin.
With both sides drilled, it was time to crawl in to the cockpit thru the rear window opening to drill the screws holes from the inside. The instructions say to remove the whole frame/bubble, but I could fit inside, so this was less time consuming. I had the frame clamped down tight to keep it from moving, so this was the only way in. It's about 89 degrees in the garage at this point, and as a result, sweat was running down my face the whole time I was in there...NO air movement at all.
You can see the #30 cleco's behind me (the panel is to my back). Here is the other side-
Those three screws needed to be removed to finish drilling the skirts, and to do this I had to remove the canopy bubble. Since almost all the holes are drilled at this point, I was able to raise the canopy to make my egress easier.
So out with all the cleco's, remove the skirts, remove the bubble, then re-cleco the skirts, and drill the remaining three holes per side.
After those were drilled, I removed the skirts again, and we're left with the side rails full of holes.
This whole process worked very well, and the results are great!
Tomorrow at work I'm going to use the metal sheer to cut the skirts to the proper size. That's gonna be a bit nerve-wracking because if I mess up those trims, I have all those holes to re-drill...
At this point, Brit was pulling in the driveway, and it was time for dinner. So, all of the deburring, dimpling, and countersinking will happen next time.
2.75 hours