I started off today by pulling the peel ply off the aft canopy layup. I then cleaned up the layup and cut off the overhanging glass.
Here’s a shot of the just-glassed aft internal canopy frame.
And a shot of the entire canopy frame so far . . .
I then spent a good hour sanding down the groove on the aft side of the canopy, as well as both the aft canopy edge and the front turtleback edge, to accept the turtleback flange and trim seal. This of course involved countless cycles of taking the canopy off and putting it back on the fuselage. I finally got it dialed in and the pic below shows the canopy in place with the trim seal in place underneath the canopy (again). The significance of this iteration is that now the surface of the aft canopy is glassed.
I then made up another K1000-6 nutplate assembly to place in the aft left corner of the canopy to mount a spacer that will keep the compression on the canopy seal correct. After finishing the nutplate I then carved out the location that it would go in the canopy frame and set it in place.
Again, after about 4 hours total I finally finished glassing the left side of the canopy frame! Obviously this means that the entire canopy frame is glassed!!
Here are a couple closer shots of the just-glassed left side canopy frame. The top pic shows the aft left canopy frame while the bottom pic shows the forward left canopy frame.
Before I started glassing the canopy I had laid up 1 ply of BID into the channel between the turtleback front edge (which also got glassed coincidently) and on top of the existing flange. This ply of BID will help secure the cantilevered flange from the top side.
I then of course had to check it out with the black trim in place.
And a shot that shows the profile view of the turtleback/canopy flange and the black trim.
Tomorrow my goal is to get the canopy hinges and gas strut mounted in place so the canopy will be ready to travel. Of course, to do the gas strut I’ll have to glass in the canopy cross brace . . . which I intend to do fairly early tomorrow.