Buckle Up

Windshield

Got the windshield fastened today. Lots of details were involved. One problem I had was that the holes on the fuselage needed to be dimpled, but the holes were too big for the two dimple dies included. But I figured out how to make one. In the second picture you can see that my once soft computer programmer hands have been beat up and turned into tough mechanic hands.

Seat belts

The bolts for the seat belts (that weren’t included in the hardware kit grrr) arrived today. I had previously prepared the attach points so I bolted them on.

Starting on the canopy, I counted all the parts the plans call for that weren’t in the kit. There are four. Four parts that should have been in the kit. So I emailed Kerry. In the mean time I considered the canopy bows. These are aluminum tubes that frame the inside of the canopy. They come in rough curves but need to be shaped precisely and cut to length. But how do you bend an aluminum tube to shape? Well Bjarne Jensen hit me up over email and suggested I look at Bjoernar Swingen’s blog. I noticed he used play work templates. I thought I’d give it a try.

Once I made the template, I realized that I’m gonne need something stronger than my hands to bend it. So I found this post by good old OneX Mike. I’ll give it a try tomorrow.