Starting the canopy

Although I still have to finish up the elevator pushrods and mount the horizontal and vertical stabilizers, I’m moving on to the canopy frame while I decide what to do about Van’s horizontal stabilizer service bulletin. I haven’t decided yet whether to mod my horizontal stabilizer per the bulletin, or just build a new one…

First steps on the canopy are fabricating the alumunum and Delrin spacers that accommodate the canopy hinges.  Nothing too complicated here…

Canopy hinge spacers

Fitting them to the forward subpanel was slightly tricky, since Vans tells you to predrill holes in the spacers that they tell you later to match-drill in place with the subpanel. Fortunately, the hole locations called out in the plans are spot on, so I didn’t have much trouble fitting the spacers.

I didn’t take any pictures of the fitting process, but here’s the finished product on the left side…

Left hinge spacers…and on the right side.

Right hinge spacers