Canopy Fairing Part 8

Deviating a bit from the KAI's order of operations.

Used a ball magnet to locate the hinge screw.

I did not trust that the magnet was in the exact center of the screw so I just drilled a small hole in the middle of the circle I drew around the magnet.  Good thing I did because the screw was offset from the circle.  I just enlarged the hole I made to compensate till it was big enough to get the screw out.

I then popped the canopy off the fuse.  Thankfully the packing tape and wax did its job as the canopy released without breaking anything.

Where the spacer strip over hung the top forward skin on the sides, it caused the glass layup to pooch out and when I started sanding the fwd arm layups, it was clear that I was going to sand thru the glass layers at this point.  So I added some epoxy and flox to this area.  I will smooth this out and provide a little relief for the seal.  Since the seal ends up sitting on top of the foam block that gets added later, the depth of the seam relief should not be critical here as the foam seal can compress a bit.

Same thing on the other side.

I also covered the exposed pink structural foam at the front end of the arms per the KAI's.

After trimming the lower edge of the fairing to within about 1/4" of the line that extends from the bottom of the canopy side skirts, I then used a long flat sanding block to sand them down to about 1/8" away from the line.  I want to ensure I don't shorten them too much as I want them to overhang the fwd fuse sides similar to how the canopy side skirts do.  I have seem some 12's where the builder cut them too short and they have an ugly gap visible.  Once the canopy is back on the airplane, I can fine tune them.  Much easier to sand them a little more than it is to extend them later.