Stjohn's RV-7

6 hours.
Six arduous, terrifying, frustrating hours of clecoing, unclecoing, reclecoing, and of course filing. I did, however, get the hinges drilled and got started on the rest of the canopy frame. I did it like the plans said, I got the hinges placed. Thanks to VAF, I picked up a few tips and advice from those who have gone before. For instance, I was able to make 1/4″ angle drill out of my die grinder that has heretofore been useless except as a deburring tool. Works great as long as you only need 1/4″ holes drilled. All I needed it for was to mark the spot on the hinge where the drill goes through, not actually drill anything. But I have to agree with many others; The plans and instructions for this part of the kit blow chunks. The sequence is vague, the suggested methods are weird, and it’s really difficult to picture a group of brilliant, rational men arriving at the decision that this is the way to go. But enough bitching. This is one of those things where you just have to sack up and dive in, and hope you don’t drill or cut anything past the point of ordering new parts. It’s an iterative process, a tweak here, bend a little there. and just try to get the best fit possible. Eventually, I got a result I can live with, for the most part.

After one of the numerous times the skin comes off the frame, the frame is clamped down onto the drill press table, where I’m driving a 3/8″ bit through a pilot hole I made by using a block of MDF drilled #30 in that same drill press. With 3/8″ holes drilled in the frame, the hinge bushings are press-fit into them by means of a pneumatic rivet squeezer loaded with flat dies.

So back on the fuse goes the frame, where the pins had to go through the bearing blocks and the bushings just right. This is tricky until you get the hang of it, and by tricky, I mean swearing, tool-throwing, demon-calling frustrating. But in the end, it hinges up just like it’s supposed to. Or not. In the down position, the hinge gooseneck makes contact with the bearing block spacer, which blows, although is quite easily fixed. I just had to shave off a little of the bearing block spacer at the point of contact and everything became irie.

This is a shot of one of the hinge pins. I opted not to have a canopy jettison system. It’s complex, it adds weight, and the chances of me needing to jettison the canopy and bail out don’t merit all the extra work and weight. Not only that, if I have to make the canopy go away, I can hit it with a canopy cracker and the wind will take care of the rest. So this method has the hinge pin linkage folded back and fastened to the F-745 (or 740-something– I can’t remember part numbers off the top of my head) rib, where it’s secured by an Adel clamp. The other end of the pin will take an AN365 stop nut and washer.

Here’s the assemblage with the skin clecoed on and the deck skin partially clecoed on. This is where the freakout happened. At one point I did this without putting any clecoes along the middle of the forward deck skin because I wanted to see the whole clecoed assemblage open and close with the skin on it. So what happens? I go to open it and the canopy frame skin collides with the forward deck skin. WTF? I started shaving off edges, wiggling parts, and I even got so freaked out I drilled off the splice plate to see if I could push the canopy frame ribs upward enough to buy me the clearance I needed. I rolled the canopy deck skin up along the edge just a hair. AT the end of it all, I clecoed the forward skin on in the middle, and yeah, there was enough clearance for the canopy frame skin to get by. Just.

As you might guess, this process leaves a hell of a mess. I had a clean shop a couple of days ago. This is going to have to wait til morning.
After all that, I was still looking for more punishment, so I got started on the rest of the frame. I made the requisite spacers and placed them around the longerons as specified. Then I made the splice plate for the two F631 channels (which are copies of the channels used in the roll bar) that form the aft frame of the canopy.

Like so.
That’s it for now, I’m going to chill out with some sake and some spicy snacks, maybe watch a little TV, then have that dinner thing.