This end baffle in the canopy was full size initially. I thought it was a great idea, noise reduction and so on. Wrong! It made less room in the back seat for the passenger, so it had to go…or at least be adjusted. Once the decision was made, without hesitation, I hacked into it!

I used a spline made from a bit of plastic conduit and got a good line for the curve. That was easy enough to cut and file to match.

Once off the fuselage everything was easier to see.

I then removed all the blue foam in the ‘cavity’ down to the glass.

My idea is to use the spar tape UNI and really make the end of the canopy very stiff and strong. I hate that it adds extra weight. My thinking is that I don’t want the canopy to move too much with temperature changes when I’m going from a hot airfield takeoff to FL180. That might be 36C temperature change in 15 minutes or less.

I packed a LOT of spar cap UNI into that groove. Much more than I though would fit. It is really going to be strong. I used the usual disciplines of fully wetting out the cap material on plastic and squeegeeing like crazy before packing it into that groove.  I finished up with some flox as filler on the top and peel ply. After cure I will cut it back to the good curve I have already made and work from there.