I started this in the morning and finished up about 11:30pm. Yes I had to take my car for a service and the usual things of life in between. I was pretty determined to get this step done.

First up was another trial fit of the canopy. It is scary every time I move it on my own from the box on the floor to the airframe. I think the fact that it is heavier than usual has allowed this, otherwise it’s a two person job.

If you look in the pic you can see I’ve marked on the outside where the ledge comes up to which is about 1.2″. Of course I did have to trim the ledge layup I did yesterday first and make everything nice. I did a bit of a trial fit with the clamps and blocks I’d made and its looking good.

I next got the canopy off and on its back like a turtle. I’m using a few foam blocks to reduce the rolling around and bubble wrap to give a bit of cushioning. Then an hour or so carefully peeling back the protective plastic on the inside and running some blue Tesa tape around the edges.

I used 120 grit wet and dry to rough up the area that will be bonded on the inside. Doing this also allowed me to see any gum residue and plenty showed up. I used White Spirit for the clean up. This stuff is used in dry cleaning apparently and I did try it on an offcut. It is fine for my use here and there was no fogging or damage I could see. A canopy makers website recommended it for cleaning gunk off which is where I got the tip.

Here’s a shot of the ledge masked up and ready. I first roughed up the gluing surface a little and put a thin coat of pure epoxy on as well as the same on the canopy gluing area. (I later put a thin coat of flox on this canopy inside 1.2″ strip too.)

Now for the flox. I knew that once the canopy went on I wouldn’t be able to get to this area to add any more. I’ve put the two pictures here so you can see with and without flox. I went nuts and filled the ledge with stiff flox all the way around. My thinking was that this would reduce voids, perhaps make the canopy rail a bit stiffer and I could just remove squeeze out from the bottom. What squeezes out the top will need to be ground away after cure and after the canopy and rail assembly is removed.

Wow did I mix a lot of flox! It took about 300grams of epoxy in separate batches, then quite a bit of flox to make a stiff mixture.  It was much more than I thought and of course more weight than I like. It is always more weight than I like.

Somewhat to my surprise the next part went really well. I got the canopy in place and I started using those blocks you see that I’d made previously. I used every big clamp I had and made a lot more blocks on the fly. Here and there I added sticks too and some hot glue to stop the clamp blocks creeping. There was some squeeze out but not nearly as much as I was expecting.

All that time on shaping the rollover and it now needs a little bit added maybe 0.15″ on one side. The canopy seemed to settle in just a touch more than when fitted.

The sides are pretty good. I can really see how the canopy was blown differently one side to the other so its not quite the result I wanted. The center-line is much closer than I though which is a plus. Only about .1″ to the right of the middle at the front and very very close to the middle of the firewall at the rear. It still looks slightly out to me when I view the canopy from the front. Good thing I’ll be sitting inside it. Ha! The canopy where it meets the turtleback is around .2″ out left to right at the bottom. I can fix it as its only foam. It will be a good days work. I think it’s just the way the canopy flexed when it was made parallel to the sides with the clamps.

Looking back I could have just left the turtleback wider than needed. I was concerned about scratching the canopy as I blended in the sides. Well I have to do this now anyway! So It will be a lot of protective tape there. Overall, a big step in the build is done.