Chapter 18 – Aft canopy glassed

No, not the aft canopy as in I have two canopies…. a fore and aft canopy! I mean the canopy’s aft frame was glassed!  Ok, more on that later . . .

After running around doing some prep for my fuselage haul down to NC and picking up the trailer, my first shop task was to mark and trim the cured glass that makes up the turtleback seal flange.

[Note: I decided to wait on loading up the fuselage until I finish the canopy, so while fellow LEZ bubba Mike’s visit was great, it turned into a more of a social one since I really do need (or want!) to have the canopy installed before hauling the fuselage down to NC. Since I have the trailer for a week, another day or two to get out the door won’t hurt...].

Here we have the numerous popsicle sticks with copious amounts of hot glue to keep them and the foam form pieces in place.  Also you can somewhat see the trimmed turtleback seal flange.

I then removed all the dried hot glue, popsicle sticks and foam & tape form pieces.  I then pulled the peel ply from the top/inside of the seal flange and cleaned up the glass.

Here’s another shot of the turtleback’s new addition from the left side . . .

I then test fit a piece of the same black rubber trim that I’m also using on the glare shield edge.  The trim here fit well and I’m good with using it for the seal trim back here.

To configure the aft interior end of the canopy to interface with all this that’s going on at the turtleback, I used some model paint to create a black edge on the seal flange.  I then quickly mounted the canopy and pressed the canopy’s blue foam into the flange on the turtleback . . .

The result was both a black mark left by the seal flange’s painted edge, and a depression in the foam.

It took a couple of iterations to shape the canopy’s aft foam and dial in the interfacing aft canopy and turtleback, but it looked good and I was satisfied enough to start glassing the aft canopy frame.

The pic above was taken with the black rubber trim (red arrows below) in place, at which point I then knew that the trim would fit underneath the aft canopy edge.

I then got to work glassing the canopy’s aft edge, side #3 of 4 sides.  If you look closely in the pics below, you can see just aft of the canopy edge is a greenish line about 5/8″ in width that tapers back into the canopy for a termination point at each outboard end.  That line is a 3″ UNI tape that I essentially pulled apart and made 4 separate 5/8″ wide plies stacked one on top of the other, with each respective/successive ply wet out as it was placed in this “mini-trough.”  This will make a solid fiberglass bow connected to and just aft of the canopy edge.  I then laid up a “normal” 3″ UNI tape that covered this stacked tape with the remaining tape glass positioned aft of the stacked 3″ UNI tape.

I’d like to reiterate that these extra 3″ UNI tape plies serve a twofold purpose:

  1. It reinforces the aft canopy to serve as an ad hoc roll bar for the GIB, and
  2. serves a vital role in keeping the aft canopy shape since I will have no cross structure (arrow stock) across the very aft canopy.

After the requisite minimum canopy layup work time of 3 hours, I finally finished glassing the very aft of the canopy frame.  I then of course peel plied it.

Here are the 2 sides of the aft canopy frame, glassed and peel plied.

Tomorrow I plan on finalizing the canopy construction by laying up the last round of glass on the frame: the left side.  I will then prep as much as possible in order to get the canopy mounted to the fuselage via the hinges.

 

Chapter 18 – Canopy rail glassed

Today I started out by spending a good hour cleaning the internal turtleback 1-ply BID layup.  I pulled the peel ply and dealt with the peel ply boogers.  I also razor trimmed the glass . . . one nice thing about a 1-ply BID layup is that it doesn’t matter if the glass is cured or not, it’s EZ to razor trim!

I then got busy cutting up and shaping some scrap urethane foam to attach to the front edge of the turtleback, using both nails and hot glued popsicle sticks.  I then sanded the interior edge of the urethane foam even with the interior surface of the turtleback.

Here you can see the shaped urethane foam pieces held in place with nails and hot glued popsicle sticks.  After I was certain that the foam was mounted fairly securely, I did a final shaping that included rounding over the bottom forward corner with about a 1/4″ radius.

I then taped up just the bottom edge of the foam.  This foam form is to create a lip akin to the what the glare shield up front has, and that will stop any water from leaking into the cabin.  Moreover, it will also be used as a flange for the canopy seal to seat into.

I then prepregged and laid up a 3-ply BID layup around the taped foam form, overlapping onto the interior turtleback glass by about an inch.

Here we have another couple shots of the 3-ply BID layup that will make up a flanged lip around the turtleback for the canopy to seat into.  As you may be able to tell, I peel plied both the tape form before laying up the 3 plies of BID, and then peel plied on the outer surface of the 3-ply layup.  This is to allow for me to pull the peel ply on the top of the flange and layup a ply of BID to both close out the front edge of the turtleback, but to then connect that to the lip flange, adding another securing ply from the top side.

While the turtleback seal layup cured, I then made up another #6 screw nutplate assembly to mount another 1/16″ thick aluminum plate to on the bottom edge of the aft canopy rail. I will then flox an associated 1/16″ thick plate onto the longeron top so that the two plates come in contact and rest against each other when the canopy is closed.  These plates will ensure a 1/8″ gap to allow for proper compression of the rubber canopy seal.

I then got busy cutting the UNI and BID required as per plans for the right side canopy frame rail layup.

I then spent the next 3.5 hours glassing and peel plying the right side canopy frame rail.

Here’s another shot from the aft end of the right side canopy frame rail layup.

I also measured and cut the 3 plies of BID for the aft canopy frame layup that I will definitely try to squeeze in tomorrow.

Tomorrow fellow Long-EZ builder Mike Monsivaiz is coming over to help me load up the fuselage to haul it down to NC.  Although I will have the fuselage on the trailer ready to haul down to NC, I may delay one day to finish up the canopy to the point I can mount it properly with the hinges and gas strut…. that way the fuselage can have the canopy mounted atop it –sans the frame!– as it travels down to NC.  Time is TIGHT, but we’ll make it work!

 

Chapter 18 – Turtleback glassed

My goal for the day was to get both the turtleback interior glassed (which happened) and the aft canopy frame glassed (which didn’t happen).  I didn’t glass the internal aft canopy frame due to a twofold reason: 1) I need the drip seal on the turtleback to be shaped first, and moreover, 2) there was just not enough hours in the day to get it all done!

I started off today by cutting the set of canopy hinges from the 2 x12″ stock I had on hand.

Although my hinges are much larger than plans (MS20001-12) –which I was clued in on by two of my fellow builders: Dave Berenholtz & Mike Beasley– I still cut them to the plan’s length of 8 inches.

I then test fitted a hinge on the front hinge hardpoint depression.

While I had my chop saw out to cut my hinges, I went ahead and lopped off the angled ends of my 1/8″ thick aluminum bars to make up 4 spacers to place at the front and aft end of each longeron.  For now these little spacer nubs will mimic the 1/16″ spacers that will be mounted to both the longerons and the canopy frame, both front and back, that provide the proper gap for seal compression.

Here are 2 of the 1/8″ thick spacer nubs I cut . . .

And here are a pair of spacer nubs taped in place at the front end of the longerons.

And a couple more 1/8″ thick spacer nubs at the back end of the longerons.  This allows me to get rid of the long spacer bars that I used as the original 1/8″ spacers when constructing the canopy frame and up until today that I was using to maintain that gap whenever I placed the canopy on the fuselage.

After covering a good portion of my shop in fiberglass dust from Dremelling out the front canopy hinge depression last night, I decided for the rest of my messy massive dust-producing canopy frame work that I would haul the canopy out to the side yard…. so that’s what I did!

I then got to work on the canopy aft hinge depression.  Again, I’m making these hinge depressions about 0.140″ deep since the hinges measure 0.270″ at the midpoint when closed.  With the top hinge half buried 0.140″ into the canopy frame, this clearly leaves 0.130″ [very close to 1/8″] left for the other hinge half, and as a close-to-1/8″-spacer for the canopy seal.

After creating the aft canopy hinge depression I test fitted the canopy hinge.  Looks pretty good so far!

With the canopy outside I decided to knock out cleaning up the aft canopy frame foam and original layup to allow for a glass to glass joint back here . . . what I’m going to do is a bit detailed, so I’ll explain it when I do it.  The main thing here is that I got the canopy’s aft frame shaped and ready for glass.

Here’s some closer up shots of the canopy’s aft frame ready for glass.  The narrowed foam on the aft end is for the same type of seal that I’ll use along the canopy frame sides.

Again, before I can glass the aft canopy frame, I needed to get the interior turtleback glassed.  I spent a bit of time finishing up getting all the dead micro removed from the front face of the firewall… due to a fair bit micro oozing onto the firewall when I set the foam blocks in place to create the turtleback.

After I cleaned up the firewall, I did a final shaping of the foam to get it locked in to the right dimensions.

The first step in glassing the internal turtleback really had nothing to do with the existing turtleback proper, but rather the additions of the 2 pieces that I lopped off of the aft lower corners of the canopy frame.  As a reminder, this is to ensure clearance with the forward-projecting conical shaped “shoulders” that extend from the upper cowling.

I micro’d the foam and hit the glass to glass edges with a bit of flox. I then used some finishing nails to secure both sides in their respective places.

Here’s a shot of the interior turtleback additions.  I didn’t trim the additions at this point because I wanted to do it with them mounted in place.

A little while later the turtleback additions were cured enough that I could proceed with laying up the 1 ply of BID that goes on the inside surface of the turtleback and overlaps onto the front face of the firewall, as per plans.  I actually used 2 separate pieces of BID and just overlapped them a little at TDC.  In addition, measuring and cutting the pieces of BID (from the scrap glass pile) was one of the things I did while waiting for the additions to cure a bit.

Here’s some closer shots of each inside turtleback surface on both the left and right sides.

It’s late so I wanted to finish this blog post and hit the sack in prep for tomorrow.  My goal for tomorrow is to get turtleback drip seal edge glassed and the aft end of the canopy frame glassed, as a minimum.  Since nearly all the prep work is done I should be able to get a fair amount of glassing completed tomorrow.

 

Chapter 18 – Canopy frame rails

Today really was all about prep on the canopy as I didn’t get one thing glassed.

I’ve been pondering for a few weeks now just how exactly to deal with the inside aft bottom edge of the canopy.  The blue foam is wide enough back there but the canopy comes down so low that there’s only about a half inch of foam underneath the canopy bottom edge.  I had thought about using pour foam, but I really just didn’t want to mess with building the dams for the walls and edges.

So I started off today by making up some PVC foam “quarter round” insert “molding” to increase the interior foam edge of the canopy and still have plenty of room for the canopy frame rail glass to grab ahold of the lower canopy edge.  Here you can see my testing out the fit of the PVC foam molding, which measure 0.2″ thick x 0.45″ high and is radiused significantly at the top to allow for a better glass transition from foam rail to canopy edge.

Here’s some shots of the first PVC foam aft canopy rail “quarter round” addition that I made up.

I then micro’d the new PVC foam “quarter round” additions to the aft left canopy frame in 3 spots.

Here’s a closer up view of the very aft foam “quarter round” addition on the left side aft canopy.

A little while later I did the right side aft foam “quarter round” additions in 2 spots.

Again, below is a close up of the very aft foam “quarter round” addition on the right side.

In addition, I also took a little bit to finish taping up the interior canopy so that only the edge to be glassed was exposed.  Then I finally finished sanding the interior canopy edge to allow for a good bond to the glass that will secure it in place.

With the leftover micro from adding the foam “quarter round” to the aft right side canopy, I threw in some flox and applied it to the aft end of the 1/8″ thick Balsa wood strips to reinforce the aft nose cover lip that interfaces with the very front edge of the canopy’s front skirt.

I spent a good 45 minutes doing another round of sanding on the Metal Glaze that I had applied to the canopy strut mounting tab on the roll bar.  After I got it shaped down very close to what I wanted I took it outside and hit it with a couple coats of primer.  Clearly there’s still some areas that need working, but with the primer applied they become much more apparent and easier to see.

After cutting the perimeter edge of the foam out and Dremeling the inside of the glass edge to clean it up for a nice flox corner for the entire remaining canopy side rails, I then got to work on the canopy’s front hinge mount.  Since the closed canopy hinge measures 0.270″ at the midpoint, I then set the depth of the hinge notch at 0.140″ vs the plans called out 0.150″.  I then spent another 45 minutes Dremeling and sanding the front hinge hard points to create the 0.14″ deep notch for the hinge half.  Now, this is just the initial round of cutting, sanding and shaping… tomorrow I’ll dial it it so that the hinge sits in the notched canopy rail nice and clean.

Since it was late and I had made quite enough late-night noise, I simply measured and marked the canopy’s aft hinge 0.14″ deep notch.

In addition to all the above, I spent a good bit of time drilling, chiseling, etc. to remove the cured micro that had oozed out onto the firewall when the turtleback foam pieces were glued into place . . . should have used thicker micro!

Tomorrow I plan on getting a good deal of glassing done.  At a minimum I plan to get the interior turtleback foam glassed and the aft end of the canopy frame.

 

Chapter 18/22 – Canopy skirt layup

I started off today by checking the mail to find that I had received the 8-Channel video signal multiplexer (signal combiner/sequencer, AKA “Mux”) that Eric Page constructed and Alec Myers coded…. in collaboration with Bob Nuckolls.

As per usual Eric did a phenomenal job in constructing this Video Mux.  You may have noted above that there are 4 white RCA jack pigtails hanging off the interfacing D-Sub connector.  These were connected by Eric since my original & current requirement was for only 4 video cameras (as a reminder, I have one camera each on the fuel site gages, one top side camera on the pilot headrest looking aft and one bottom CL fuselage camera just aft of the nose wheel well looking aft as well).

Here’s the module’s board that Eric constructed.

And the back side of the board.

I then got to work in the shop on finishing up the prep for glassing the canopy front underside with 3 plies of BID as per plans.  The first task was to finish taping up the canopy edge with first yellow paint tape, then duct tape over top of that.  After taping up the canopy edge to match the external canopy line, I then finished sanding the canopy edge to texture it to grip the BID plies.

I then spent about 20 minutes getting the 2 forward hard points sanded both level to each other and down to the foam canopy side rail elevation.  At first I used the Dremel tool to knock some surface glass off of the front hardpoint.  Then I switched to the “L” shaped Perma-A-Grit tool (still LOVE these Perm-A-Grit sanding tools… if you’re a builder and don’t have them, STOP what you’re doing and order them NOW!  Indispensable when building a foam/glass airplane!!!!)

After getting the front 2 hard points leveled and to the correct height, I then prepregged 2 plies of BID to combat every front line officer’s worst nightmare: “holes in the line!”  Yep, before I placed flox in the channel behind the aft wall of the canopy front skirt groove, I made 3 little mini wall inserts out of 2 ply glass and wedged them into place.

They may be a bit difficult to see, but here are the 2 ply BID mini wall layups placed inside the channel which is situated AFT of the canopy front skirt groove.  These mini walls will keep the flox inside the channel and from oozing out into the groove.

I then spent a good hour microing up the foam and creating flox edges along the canopy frame sides.

Since I had a fair bit of thick micro in a cup, instead of wasting it I then added a LOT of flox to it and created a thick flocro paste –heavier on the flox– to fill in the channel just aft of the canopy front skirt groove (where I placed the mini walls into above).

Here we have a couple shots of the floxed edges along each side of the canopy frame.

I then laid up 3 plies of BID using 6 separate pieces of BID.  The overlap for the first 2 pieces making up ply #1 is over towards the right side (left side in pic), whereas the overlap for the next 2 pieces making up ply #2 is on the opposite side.  The final 2 pieces that make up ply #3 I cut much larger so that the overlap actually created an entire new ply of BID . . . #4, which is situated in the middle 50% area of the layup where the front of the canopy frame is fairly narrow at the very forward tip of the canopy.

After the glass was laid up I then peel plied the layup.

Another shot of the glassed and peel plied canopy front underside skirt.

I then went to dinner with my buddy Rob and upon returning a few hours later I pulled the peel ply and very carefully razor trimmed around the inside edge of the glass that overlaps onto the canopy.

Inside shots of the razor trimmed glass on the interior canopy edge.

I also razor trimmed the glass overhanging the canopy front skirt groove aft wall.  This is of course the initial trimming and cleanup, with a more detailed cleanup coming tomorrow.

Here we have one final shot for the evening of the glassed canopy front underside skirt.  I really like the way the canopy frame transitions into the canopy here and think it will look really good once installed.

Tomorrow will again still be all about getting as much knocked out on this canopy as possible.

 

Chapter 18 – Front inside canopy

My friend and realtor Mindy came over this morning to discuss selling my house and also to see the progress on the Long-EZ build, which she had not seen yet in person. So before she got here I spent a good couple of hours today straightening up, which included a good 45-minute cleanup of the shop.

We then discussed the plane build for a good while as I showed her the fuselage and then the panel avionics and EFIS goodies.  After discussing house-selling stuff for a bit we went to lunch and BS’d even a bit more…. all this to say that my morning and afternoon was pretty much used up on Mindy’s visit, which was quite productive in itself.  BTW, during her visit I removed the canopy from the fuselage to enable her to look inside the fuselage.

I got down to the shop a bit after 5pm and got to work making a PVC foam plug for a hardpoint that I’ll have in the front right corner of the canopy to mount what is essentially a hook to keep the canopy front lip from lifting up in the airstream.

The PVC foam plug is 0.8″ deep and comes to within a 1/4″ of the glassed outer surface of the canopy.

Using a piece of 1/16″ thick G10 Garolite I made a 2x K1000-3 nutplate for the front right corner canopy “hook.”

I also made a K1000-6 nutplate assembly for the right front canopy corner to allow mounting a small 1/16″ aluminum spacer plate on the canopy, whereas another 1/16″ spacer plate will be floxed to the top of the longeron.  Obviously added together they will make up a 1/8″ gap which is very close to optimal for compression of the canopy seal. [The left side has a hardpoint where I would mount the nutplate assembly, so I’m waiting until after the internal canopy frame is glassed to figure it out].

I glued the two pieces above in place using micro and flox and then left them alone to allow them to cure.

I then got busy on the mess that awaited me regarding the canopy front underside skirt layup.  I was correct in that the glass did in fact get folded up underneath itself and thus jammed multiple layers up into the groove and –worse yet– off the aft wall of the glare shield interfacing groove.

It took over 2-1/2 hours to get the front canopy skirt trimmed, cleaned up, and sanded with the extra glass down in the groove removed.

I then set the canopy back in place on top of the fuselage.  The elevation of the canopy vs the aft nose cover looked great…. in fact, at most in any dimension the mismatch is about 0.030″ or less… max.

Here are a couple shots of the canopy skirt and aft nose cover interface . . . not bad!

Since it was getting late, and knowing that it was too late to use the Dremel or Fein saw, I decided to get nearly everything prepped for the canopy forward interior 3-ply layup. Since the layup is “U” shaped, I decided to go with 2 pieces of BID per ply to conserve BID and simply overlap all of them…. below you can see the 6 pieces of BID that will make up 3 plies.

Here’s a wide angle shot of the prep to glass in the next forward plies of BID at the front canopy loop.

If you look closely you can see that I used a razor knife at all the edges that will enable a flox corner.  Since the flox is the only thing touching both inside and outside glass where it meets in the outboard corner, I wanted to make sure that the bond was robust so I’ll wait until tomorrow to Dremel the interior crud off of the inside glass (I can’t do it tonight because of HOA rules and just wanting to be nice to my neighbors!)

Tomorrow I’ll continue working on the canopy to try to get it well on its way before hauling it down to NC.

 

Chapter 18 – Canopy skirt glass

Having figured out last night how much of the foam needed to be removed for glass, I started today by removing foam and micro from the very outboard edges of the canopy skirt underside.

I Dremelled both the channel groove and the edges and then sanded the bare glass part of the edges with 36 grit sandpaper.

I then spent a good half hour using the Dremel tool to remove the foam down to just shy of 1/16″ as best as I could.  Of course that made quite a mess . . .

After getting the foam removed as evenly as possible –to make room for the 4 plies of BID– I then slathered up the foam surfaces with micro slurry first and then with some thick micro.  On the front and side edges I used flocro, heavier on the flox.

I then laid up the 4 plies of BID just from the aft wall of the groove to the front edge of the canopy underside skirt.

I then peel plied the lay up.

I wanted the layup to be well on its way to being cured before I flipped it back onto the fuselage/glareshield, and it was getting fairly sticky (vs wet).  But when I remounted the canopy –to ensure the canopy underside skirt layup would cure perfectly formed to the glare shield– something was amiss.  I piled a bunch of weights on the very front portion of the canopy skirt, and it was laying down fairly well…. but it still seemed like 4 plies of BID in this configuration should not be that thick.

Well, I finally found a spot on the left side of the canopy frame where I could peer into the right underside of the canopy skirt.  I didn’t see any peel ply and as I had suspected it meant the aft wall of the groove had been caught up into the groove versus hanging freely.  I took all the weights off, had to lever the front of the canopy up… which I just lifted up around 6″ to then straighten out the glass in the groove.  The issue was the aft canopy frame (i.e. turtleback) was pushing the canopy forward as the entire canopy settled into place, so there was very little spacing between the aft edge of the glare shield and the aft wall of the canopy skirt groove.

I tried as best possible to ensure all the glass was where it was supposed to be and then set the canopy back down in place.  I then piled all the weights back up on top of it.  It did seem better, but it may still need some tweaking after it cures.

While the canopy underside front skirt layup cured I then started on the initial sanding and shaping of the Metal Glaze that I slathered onto the roll bar-attached canopy gas strut mounting tab.  The great thing about Metal Glaze is also probably one of its worst qualities in handling, it’s tough when cured so it took me over an hour just for this initial shaping.

Here’s a shot of the aft side initial shaping of the Metal Glaze.  It rained most of the day today, so tomorrow I plan on getting the final shape dialed in at which point I’ll take the roll bar outside and hit the welded on canopy gas strut mounting tab with a couple coats of primer.

I also plan on getting the remaining front interior portion of the canopy glassed as well as the foam underside of the turtleback structure.  IF I have enough time tomorrow I’ll also glass the aft internal canopy frame.

 

Chapter 18 – Cheating 101

After returning back from North Carolina this evening I wanted to get at least a couple things knocked off the to-do list.

Since it was past 8 pm by the time I got into the shop I felt I should get the noisy stuff out of the way first.  I grabbed the Dremel tool and ground down & shaped the rather grotesque welds I had made to hold the canopy gas strut mounting tab to the roll bar support tube.

Here’s the aft side (sorry for the blurriness, I loaded these after I was done applying metal glaze….) and the front side of the gas strut mounting tab, with my grinding job visible.

Then, with Metal Glaze, I slathered up the welds, transitions, and marks made to clear the paint off of the tubing for the original welding.

I was still settling in from my trip, which included baking another batch of desiccant to re-energize it for the engine dehydrator system.  By the time I had a good window of time to glass the canopy front skirt, it was a bit late.  Tired from my trip I decided to simply prep the glare shield with tape to knock out the layup and hit it hard tomorrow.

Tomorrow I plan to continue with the canopy build to get it and the nose build as far along as possible before I put the fuselage on a trailer next week to haul it down to NC.

 

Chapter 18 – Canopy Strut Mount Tab

I started off today spending a good hour cleaning up all the overhanging glass, epoxy runs, stuck on tape, etc. before doing a near-final shaping of the canopy hard points with the Fein saw and hard sanding board.

Below, starting from the left front of the canopy, you have the following cleaned and shaped hard points: forward canopy latch, safety catch, #2 of 4 canopy latch, #3 of 4 canopy latch, and aft canopy latch.

I then got busy making up a thick paper template for the canopy gas strut mounting tab that I decided quite a long time ago would get welded towards the bottom of the right roll bar support tube.

Another shot of my proposed canopy strut mounting tab.  With the multiple angles of the roll bar support tube, it took a number of iterations to get the bottom mounting indentation correct.

This spot on the roll bar support tube sets the mounting tab correctly so that it will be the correct distance forward and parallel to the canopy cross strut, and also at the correct height above the longeron (2″ seems to be the accepted standard…. at least that’s what my buddy Dave B. told me!)

I wanted to ensure I had a good piece of metal stock to make this mounting tab out of, so I scrounged around and found a piece 0.1″ thick 4130 steel . . . perfect!

I then marked up the mounting tab outline onto the 4130 steel.  At this point I just needed to confirm the shape would work and then cut it out!

After getting the canopy hardpoints glassed, according to the plans you place the canopy back onto the fuselage to check the fit, finish and clearances between canopy and fuselage.

So far so good…. everything seems to fit well!

I’ll say again, I’m really happy so far with my canopy skirt to aft nose cover intersection.

I then peeled pack a bit of the outer protective plastic to reveal the canopy strut mounting tab inside the canopy. (These pics are of the same thing…. just a slightly different perspective).

After seeing the amount of space available for my canopy strut mounting tab, I decided to shift the straighter edge from the inboard side to the outboard side, allowing me to move the canopy strut mounting hole outboard 0.5″… more towards the pivot location of the canopy hinges.

I was going to remove the canopy to swap out the original canopy strut mounting tab cutout with the newly shaped one, but then discovered that I could just carefully lift up the right side of the canopy.  I wedged it open while I taped the new/modified canopy strut mounting tab in place.

I then grabbed a shot of the newly shaped canopy strut mounting tab through the canopy. I like this shape much better because it utilizes more available space.

I then marked up the newly shaped canopy strut mounting tab onto the 4130 steel.

And then cut out the actual mounting tab from the 4130 steel plate.  Here are the iterations of the canopy strut mounting tab design below.

I then test fitted the freshly cut canopy strut mounting tab onto the rollbar support tube. You may also note that I removed the paint off of the support tube in prep for welding the tab into place.

I also ensured that with the lower shape of the mounting tab that I could get the tab parallel to the pilot’s seat back (which would be parallel to the canopy cross strut).

I then mocked up the canopy gas strut onto the mounting tab.

With everything looking good, I removed the roll bar from the fuselage and placed it onto my welding table.  I of course had to pull out my welding kit and set it up as well.

A few more minor trims and I finally had the shape of the canopy strut mounting tab dialed in.

I then proceeded to lay down some hideous looking welds, although this tab is now attached to the roll bar like nobody’s business.  Tonight was clearly not a great welding night, although I am out of practice on TIG, and I had a few minor issues.  For one, I was welding a 0.1″ thick straight piece of metal to a 0.065″ thick tube.  So I had to be careful of both getting a good flow of metal while not blowing out the side of the tube, which I did a couple of times but was able to quickly flow in some welding rod to fill the holes!

Also, I had initially just planned on tack welding this tab in place, but then decided to string the welds together which turned out to be just that: nothing more than a string of tack welds!

Another shot of the canopy strut mounting tab welded onto the roll bar.

Well, as I quite often respond when people ask me if I welded something…. “I’m not that great of a welder, but I’m a hell of a grinder!”  So, I’ll grind down just a bit of the ugliness, slather up the weld with Bondo and then shoot it with paint a bit later.  That should do the trick and hide my disgusting welds!

BTW, when I mocked up the tab while on the fuselage, I aligned it with the pilot’s seat back.  Well, not thinking about my curved roll bar base –which follows the curve of the fuselage– when I had it on the welding table I aligned the mounting tab to the roll bar side. Thus the reason the tab angles in slightly on the inboard (left) side . . . Yep, an oops but it makes zero negative impact in the operation of the canopy gas support strut.

Here’s another shot of the canopy strut mounting tab.

This time around I actually mounted the canopy gas strut by bolting it into place.  So far so good!

And a final shot of my canopy strut mounting tab welded to my roll bar.

Tomorrow is pack out day and then another quick haul down to NC.  Moreover, having just welded the canopy strut mounting tab into place on the roll bar knocks out the last of my immediate welding tasks on this airplane build which allows me to then pack up the last of my welders and my entire welding kit to haul down to NC.

In addition, I’m nearly out of epoxy and will order another gallon so that it will be on hand when I get back from NC.  In the time I have after I return to prep the fuselage and canopy, I do plan on getting the interior canopy frame glassed before it goes on the trailer!

 

Chapter 18 – Hardpoints Glassed!

It’s interesting that when looking down the road at required build tasks some things pop out as seemingly challenging but then they end up being fairly routine, while there’s other tasks that you barely make mention of mentally, mere background noise, that in your mind should merely take hours but end up taking days . . . in other words, predicting man-hours spent in all the wrong places!

Ahh, thus is exactly the case with the canopy hard points!  Who knew they’d take so long or be such pain in the backside?!  Regardless, no matter how long it took, the canopy hard points are glassed!

I started today by pulling the peel ply off the canopy forward hinge hard points and inspecting the layups…. they looked fine.

I then curved the outer edges and tops of the last round of foam additions I made for the 2 aft canopy latch hard points on the left side canopy frame.  The forward of these 2 hard points was already at the exact width I needed, 1.85″ while the aft hard point needed a little narrowing so I sanded it down to 1.85″ width as well.

I then laid up 2 plies of BID on the forward hardpoint of this pair, canopy latch #3 of 4.

And then also laid up 2 plies of BID on the aft canopy latch hardpoint.

I would like to note that these 2 aft protruding canopy latch hard points (above) are 1 of 2 options that I have for mounting the canopy latch hardware.  As per plans, the standard canopy latches will get mounted with bolts running vertically.  However, if I find these hardpoints too obtrusive, unsightly or the plans method of latch catch installation too problematic, I reserve the right to shave these off and mount new latches (which I would have to cut out of flat aluminum, see pic below left) which would mount with the hardware installed horizontally (pic below right).

Option #2 is a blatant copy of Mike Beasley’s outstanding work that he did on his canopy, which is pretty close in size & shape to mine (from what I can tell pic wise).  I nabbed these pics off Mike’s very informative Long-EZ build site.

One final point of note on my 2 canopy latch options is A) for option #1 I already have all but one set of latch hardware in hand, and B) since these hard points traverse the width of the canopy frame, it’s clearly much easier to lop off the protruding hardpoint section to go with option #2 than it would be to add it later if I wanted to go with option #1.

Moving on.

With the 2 aft canopy latch hardpoint retaining glass laid up, I then spent about 5 minutes per forward left side hardpoint with the Fein saw for an initial cleanup.  Here is the aft most hardpoint of the 3 that had an accelerated curing event (not quite your typical “violent” exotherm).

Here’s the middle of the 3 forward hard points, which will be where the safety catch will get mounted.  I had a pic of the forward hardpoint as well, but it was very blurry so I deleted it.

I will say that trimming off the nasty tops and then digging down into these front 3 hard points proved to be the normal arduous task of trimming solid flox & glass.  Although not pictured, I later dug down into this hardpoint almost 1.5″ and found nothing to be concerned about structure wise.  And given each of these hard points weren’t quite full when I stopped, with about 3/8″ more of new flox and BID required to get them to level with the bottom canopy frame, I’m very confident there is no structural issue with these hardpoints (I did a fair bit of research as well and from what I could ascertain 160-200° curing temps are not damaging in any manner to a layup).

And here we have the 2 forward hard points on the right side for the forward canopy hinge after I pulled the peel ply.  I then hit the hard points with the Dremel tool to clean them up a bit.

I then got to work on the right side aft canopy hinge hard points.

I dug the foam and dead micro out, pulled the peel ply on the inside of the newly applied “retaining wall” glass and prepped them for the BID/wet flox hard point mix.

This time around I decided to avoid any exothermic type reaction so I simply use slow hardener and filled each hardpoint up only about 2/3rds of the way.  I then peel plied each hardpoint.  The plan was after the first round cured I would then pull the peel ply and top off each hardpoint hole in an attempt to minimize any excessive curing heat.

Here you can see the aft hinge hard point holes filled with wet flox and BID, but not all the way.  The layup mixture is peel plied and allowed to cure before another final round of wet flox/BID mixed was added to fill the hardpoint holes level with the foam canopy frame.

I then dug out and cleaned up the hardpoint hole for canopy latch #3 of 4….

And the canopy aft latch hardpoint.

Here we have the 2 aft canopy latch hard points ready for their wet flox/BID concoctions.

It was getting toward the end of the evening and I wanted to get the aft canopy corners cut off since I needed to first use my battery powered “skil” saw to trim down the canopy’s wood support frame to allow access –if you can call it that!– to get the Fein saw in to lop off the aft lower corner of each canopy side.  You can see the visible green cut line. [Note: all the above power tools make a lot of noise, and it was getting late… my community homeowners association and I already have a strained relationship….. so…. ya know!]

I then cut off the lower aft corner of the right side canopy frame.

I discussed this in an earlier post, where I noted I couldn’t just do this during canopy removal because I had duct tape under the aft canopy frame as a release agent.  This piece will be attached to the aft side turtleback (sans duct tape) and will allow the forward part of the upper cowling’s protruding shoulder (faintly marked on the side of the turtleback) to be installed without any clearance issues (if my prognosticating is correct!).  It also provides clearance for the canopy when it is opened with the forward part of the cowling shoulder structure.

Here I’ve done the same on the left side, lopping off the lower aft corner of the canopy (seen in background) to add it onto the left side turtleback structure.

Here’s a tandem shot of the new turtleback additions.

And I couple wider angle shots.  I left the first pic even though it’s blurry to get an idea of how these turtleback lower corner additions will look.

And a final shot of the canopy with the lower aft corners lopped off.  Now, to be clear this is not a design feature dreamed up by me –although admittedly I’ve come up with a few doozies!– but rather the quickest, most acceptable response to having to contend with the upper cowling shoulders and ensuring clearance for the canopy to open without hindrance.  Obviously I only needed this for the right side, but doing both sides makes the canopy and turtleback symmetrical.  So, if you don’t like it, than bicker at Mike Melvill –the guy who designed these cowlings– next time you see him . . . not me! haha!

Ok, so jumping ahead about 5 hours, I finally completed glassing ALL the canopy hard points . . . whew!  As I said at the beginning of this post, I would not have expected these darn things to take so long.

Here’s a shot of the right side canopy hinge hard points.

And the 4 canopy latch (remember, I added a latch) and safety catch hard points.

The aft 4 hard points on the left side canopy frame.

And the aft 2 canopy latch hard points.

Finally, we have the front canopy latch hardpoint, floxed, glassed and peel plied.

Tomorrow I’ll continue with some tasks on the canopy, but I need to start packing since I’ll be taking a quick load down to North Carolina in a couple of days.  I will then return, do a mad blitz to finish as much as I can to make the fuselage road worthy before I load it up and haul it down to NC as well on 1 August.