With some help from fellow builder and pilot Darren , we lifted the canopy on and off the fuselage a number of times where I trimmed for the hinge placement. The left side of the plane is easy. Most of the overhang can stay although I’ll be matching it to the top of the strakes once they are built.

The right side is where the hinges go. This needs to be right at the edge of the canopy or its going to bind. I trimmed a lot off as you can see below. I will have some challenging fixes to make later to fill in the gaps and make it look like my over-wide canopy was really a part of the plan, not something I’m compensating for.  Its all good.

I soon saw that my expensive extra wide hinges…were not wide enough  to also make purchase on the longerons. I’m maybe .3″ short. In the world of hinges thats quite a lot. Later that day I ordered a new hinge. I only need two 8″ strips but they come in 72″ lengths and the slightly wider variety is more than double the price of the already expensive ones I had bought.  Here’s the part number… MS20001-12-7200

The next issue to address is that my hard points for the new hinges were not wide enough. I’m going to put the bolts through the longerons as planned and I’ll need to tap some screw holes as well into hard material. This is pretty easy as I’ve just done the job. I routed out material as you see above.

Next up was again huge amounts of glass and flox. I got rid of most of my scrap BID with these.

After cure a noisy grind off with the vibration cutter. Here the canopy work has to stop until I get the hinges in. They will not be sent out from the USA until the end of the month. Special order and all that. I still have some other jobs to focus on so the time will not be wasted, no matter how much I’d like to get the canopy capers over with.