With the canopy back on it is time to fix everything relating to its fit. These will be the steps before the fill and sanding stage.

First I’d like to show you what needs doing.

Now the strakes are on I can see that the canopy doesn’t quite close. I’m using a bit of paper here to see where its touching the strake top.

After many careful goes with my permagrit files, I have a reasonable fit on the left side over the strake at the rear.

Towards the front I have a bit of overhang to deal with. As I like to say, much of this is because the canopy arrived a good 2.5″ too wide and I’m having to grow the airplane to fit it. This excuse is starting to get old. I just need to fix it.

At the front you can really see where I have to fill in some gaps. On this right side its going to be a little more challenging than the left because I need to leave room for the canopy to open and not jam on the side. At the front because of the canopy curve it should be an easy fix.

Can you see the gap size now? Yippps!

The hinge area is a different can of worms.

Here’s the rear hinge and quite a gap.

This shows that having carefully curved the fuselage per plans, some years later I realise I shouldn’t have. If only my crystal ball was working better back then. I think it was full of fiberglass dust.

Now here’s a real issue. Hinge overhang, very noticeable at the front. When this huge canopy opens there is a lot of weight outboard at the hinge edges and I am going to address this.

Here’s the rear hinge which also has overhang, just a bit harder to see.

Oh boy, its a mess back here too. This is my bad. I had the canopy nearly perfect but just had some tiny movement in the hinges when I drilled them out. This led to a large mismatch back here. I earlier added a lip to cover the intersection which of course made things a bit worse.

My plan is to make this outside area a good fit and something to be happy with.

After the outside is done I’ll revisit the internals of the lip for some sort of rubber seal. Wow I just don’t have any plan for that yet. I will see what I have in a week or two and decide then. The outside still needs to be right first, I mean the canopy HAS to fit!

If you look carefully down the left side you can see the mismatch that I will fix.

There is a bit of an outward bulge in the canopy itself too that doesn’t quite work with the sides. Its not going to be perfect, it will be functional and the air should be happy flowing past for a smooth side. That’s the primary plan, lets try not to slow down the air molecules as they go past. Making it aesthetically pleasing will be a bonus.