Today, not as many visible things to show but spend the whole session in trying to bend the curved bars of the rear of the canopy frame to comply with the bent in the top fuselage skin.
In order to get the frame to fit correctly, You need the long square bars on the side bottoms to be more or less horizontal and parallel to the canopy decks. This is horizontal slope controlled by the height of the side bars in the front and the height on the downwards track of the slider in the back.The distance in front and back measured from the canopy deck should not vary more than 1/8". It's kind of difficult to check now as the forward legs are still full length.
I cut off a small section from the legs to start with but if I would start again, I would probably have left it as they are. The height of those legs only gets defined much later when mating the two canopy plexi halves at the top of the rollbar.
The rear bow is parallel to the top fuselage skin but inset about 1/16". I used a scrap piece of 0.64 sheet and a steel ruler to verify this. Lay the sheet on the frame bow and hold the steelroller over both the scrap piece and the top skin and they should be level.
As things are not difficult enough, you also need perfect spacing along the sides of the frame. Here also, the side bows are inset 1/16 from the fuselage sides. You can not bent too far in as otherwise the rear sides will not pass the sides of the top fuselage skin. A lot of things to check and worry about with a frame that is stuburn as a donkey.
Not sure why I took the shot below but it shows the relation between the canopy roller track and the inner side of the canopy deck (as for now).
Bending, rebending, slow bits at a time. Trying to get closer to a good fit. Make sure you have some beers in the fridge before your start for after the session because you will be frustrated in the evening.
It's an iterative and frustrating process as the whole frame responds to each movement you make in one place. As you bend in one frame bow, you often get perrverse effects on the other end.
I am checking always from the front of the fuselage looking to the back and eye balling the relation of the two rear side bows and the top fuselage skin.
Vans has some tips on their website in a seperate pdf in the tips section but it's rather generalistic info when it comes to bending the frame.
The only real good tip I can give here so far is: don't bend a lot. The frame is actually already quite good as you get it. Bending heavily will make it worse and it will be hard to get back to the original shape once you start messing with it.