Canopy work begins

This Sunday was the day I have been waiting for.  The temperature was in the low 70's and it was sunny so I pulled the canopy out in the sun and started cutting away.  So far so good but I've only completed the first step of removing the extra plexi around the edges.  There were several other tasks this weekend so here we go with pictures.

First order of business this weekend was to continue work on the empennage fairings.  Here is the vertical stabilizer fairing.  I filled the back side of the fairing with some pink foam board and then glassed that in.  After it set up I mixed up some micro balloons and epoxy to use as a filler.  Now I have to do some sanding and maybe a little more filling.

Here you can see the vertical stabilizer and the elevator fairings installed.  I did both sides and also managed to get the open back side of the HS fairing glassed in similar to the VS above.

I had a little extra micro so I started filling in the HS fairing.

As I mentioned in the opening comments, here is the canopy after I spent 3 hours cutting and sanding the edges.  3 hours on the hard driveway concrete and I'm beat!

Here are the scrap pieces that are left over.  The plans have you save them and practice drilling holes in them but since I am gluing my canopy on I only have one large hole to drill and that will be done with my step drill bit.

While I was waiting for the temperature to come up outside I went ahead and mounted the oil, fuel and manifold pressure senders.  I also fabricated a bracket to hold the fuel flow transducer and since it needed to be powder coated I went ahead and did the oil cooler mount angles as well.  Almost time to install the engine mount for hopefully the last time.