I am waiting for my GPS Antennae to be delivered, which I intend to fit on the turtle deck just behind the rear windows.

So I thought I’d press on with the Canopy Frame, leaving the rear window stage of this section until later … I want good access to the rear fuselage to install the antennae and run the cables.

I deburred all the canopy parts before building anything … quite a few, as you can see in the piccy above!

Bit of a fiddle deburring the windscreen fan vents.

At the top of page 38-08 is this rather sobering statement …

Sounds like a top tip to me!

So with trepidation, I started following the instructions exactly!

The first stage is to cleco together the forward assembly, and check whether the C-01402 Forward and the C-01403 Mid Canopy Frame flanges need fluting …

… with my set up it seemed only 2 flanges per frame needed a flute to align the holes, as seen in the picture.

I checked for alignment by inserting a rivet … the holes are aligned when the rivet sits perpendicular to the workpiece.

Canopy Handles

I reckoned the next job was to prime some parts, an adventure for tomorrow.

I had some time left before supper, so I leapt ahead and fabricated the Canopy Handles.

These are cut from a 6″ length of angle. The handles are 2″ long, so there is some spare, but not enough to make a third in case of mistakes due to the saw cuts!

So I took my time, and used the vertical sander to get the pieces to the required size.

After a careful measure/cut/file/debur/drill they turned out fine.

Be careful to cut the angles so you end up with a left and right!!

Priming

The build process is very exact, and it involves riveting parts together before match/final drilling others etc.

So it’s not straightforward to decide when to prime parts. It will inevitably mean some parts get primed but will have to be touched up when machine countersinking happens later etc.

Anyway, I primed the parts below ready for the first bit of assembly.