Dave’s RV-7A Building Log

After a long day of sailing, I wasn’t up for much serious work today. I just did a little bit of deburring, and some tinkering with the fit of the canopy frame.

I got a bunch of stuff done on the canopy frame. I started off by drilling the splice plate for the aft part of the canopy frame and drilled it to one half as instructed.

I next put some masking tape along the roll bar and marked where the rivets were at. I peeled of the tape and put it flat on the bench. I found a spacing for the screws (about 2-1/4″) that missed all of the rivets very nicely. I then put the tape onto the two halves of the aft canopy frame and marked the screw locations.

With that figured out, I was able to flute in between the screw locations. I also put the parts in the vise and did a bit of twisting to get them to eventually lay mostly flat. From there, I clamped the parts to the appropriate spots in the fuselage using the spacers I previously fabricated.

I did a bunch of scrutinizing of the frame and head scratching. Right out of the box, the fit of the sides and back of the frame is very good. I need to do just a little tweaking to get the fit a tad bit better.

Instead of making any big commitments with the drill, I fabricated a few more parts. Making the wedges on the band saw was trivial. I had a little trouble cleaning them up on the belt sander until I fashioned a handle out of duct tape. The things are just too small to hold onto. I also laid out a hole pattern in the side splice plates.

In preparation for fitting the aft half of the canopy frame, I installed the roll bar and spent a bit of time trying to figure out how the whole thing goes together. I marked out a rivet pattern on the splice plate. Not many pre-punched parts in this area of the kit.

I made the spacers as outlined in the instructions, except I made the second set 13/16″ thick as described on Dan’s site instead of 7/8″. I also preppred the edges of the rear channels and bent the flanges close to 92.5 degrees (actually just 90ish) with a padded Crescent wrench. I spent a little time trying to figure out the best screw spacing so I can flute in between the screws. I think 2-1/4″ will work well.

I tried to estimate where the lever arm needed to be in order to make the whole mechanism work well. Once I was happy with that I drilled the two welded parts of the canopy release to each other and inserted the bolt. With the bolt in there, the hat section needs a hole in order for the whole mechanism to turn. I decided to just cut down the whole hat section since it’s much longer than it needs to be. I little trimming and filing and the whole thing was working great.

I installed the canopy frame and engaged the canopy release pins. The canopy seal on the right side needed quite a bit of filing. I also had to sand down the spacer block on the right side a tiny bit more so the frame would sit down fully. The frame needs a little more tweaking at the aft end for width, but it’s looking pretty sweet.

I spent some time fitting the parts of the canopy release. I positioned the plastic block that holds the cam and drilled it to the hat channel. I drilled and installed the platenuts.

The fit was really tight for the hinge pins. I ran a 1/4″ reamer through the blocks, which helped quite a bit. There was some interference in a few places keeping the mechanism from rotating properly. I cut and filed as necessary until it all moved smoothly.

The hat channel can definitely be cut down quite a bit to provide more space behind the subpanel and allow for cutting through the subpanel later if needed for the avionics. I’m not sure why they make it so long.

We spent a long, relaxing weekend down at the ocean (3-1/2 hour drive would be 1/2 hour in the RV). While we were there, a few planes teased me by flying down the beach though the deep blue skies. I’m enjoying the building, but it will be nice to have a plane to fly around.

I jumped right back into the canopy frame. I sanded down the spacer blocks in the hinges just a tiny bit more to allow the frame to move forward a tiny fraction of an inch to get the perfect fit between the forward top skin and the canopy skin. I took the clecos out of the middle joint plate and tried to push up on the middle of the frame a little bit, but it wouldn’t budge. It would have been nice to have that sit a little higher to help the skins clear each other when opening the canopy. Oh well. I drilled the splice plate to #30. The instructions say to rivet the splice plate at this point, but I couldn’t see the point in removing the frame yet again. I just left it clecoed and taped down the frame exactly where I wanted it. I used a couple of shims at the back of the frame to provide a little bit of spacing between the back of the frame and the canopy decks.

Once I was satisfied with the fit, I drilled the hinge blocks to the hinge arms on the frame. I just drilled a little impression, per the instructions. Getting both my arms through the firewall recess to hold the drill with angle attachment is not comfortable, and then try to see what you’re doing in there. It turned out great, though.

With the frame back on the bench, the holes looked very nicely centered, almost exactly where I planned for them to be. I drilled the holes in the frame out to 3/8″ in steps of 1/64″. I used my regular drill bits for that, but in retrospect I should have used the step drill. It worked out fine. I pressed the bushings into the holes with flush sets in my rivet squeezer–a perfect fit.

I also removed the hinge blocks and finished drilling them to 1/4″. To this point I just had them drilled to #10 since I don’t own a 1/4″ angle drill bit. I put the frame back on the fuselage and pushed the pins into the hinge points. The frame wouldn’t open due to interference between the skins. Looks like I have some filing to do. I removed the front skin, and it opened fine. Very cool.

I turned my attention to finishing the canopy release mechanism. I assembled some of the parts, and that’s as far as I got. A pretty productive evening overall. I’ve been procrastinating drilling those hinge points for fear of screwing it up, but they turned out great.