Jur's RV7 Aircraft Factory
2917 hours and counting
Some decisions in life are bare of any obvious logic

Rivetted C-763 and C-762 together to form the canopy slider rail. The holes are dimpled on the top side and the square bar if countersunk on both sides for double flush rivetting.

 The image below shows the double flush rivets that connect both pieces.

With the canopy rail temporarily taped in place with duct tape, I installed the canopy frame on the tracks.
A first initial fit shows the legs of the front are too high. The relation of the frame to roll bar will have to be 3/8 over the top of the rollbar.
However, do not try to precisely cut these now. This can be done later and you risk cutting too far. Leave this for now and concentrate on getting the shape of the frame bend correctly.

An overview of the mating of the canopy frame on the canopy decks.

And a view from the front. The relation of the rear frame bow to the top fuselage skin is what you want to define. Easier said than done. There are quite a bit of points to check and measure but will describe that in the following posts.

It's been almost a month that I have been messing with this canopy frame. It drives me nuts to say the leasT;

Still I can't be happy with how it looks. Looking from the front I still have this bow down. Playing around in various places I can get the bow to be equal, but then my side bows turn up awefull with high variance between left and right.

I ended up putting the frame on equally sized wood blocks to see how it was dancing around on the blocks and tried to get them equal again.

But as I do that, you see the right bow jumping down again. I decided to send a question to Vans support to see if they have any tips or tricks.

The front bow look pretty ok so far but I was afraid of having cut too much off the forward legs. You can still use spacers in the rollers if this happens but it's not ideal. For now it looks like I will just get to the required distance.

The image below shows the process of measuring the height in relation to the top fuselage skin using a 0.064 inch scrap piece and a ruler.

The height of the front bow is close but not perfect. Later I found out that this is really irrelevant right now and the least of your worries.

Here are my current measurements on the side bows front and back. Difference is a bit mor than 1/8" but it's the shape of the rear bow that worries me the most for the moment.

Bending will go on for the next days. I'm taking this a little at a time as it's nerve cracking.

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.

Some more days later and 20 more hours of messing around with the canopy frame.
I've had it with this shitty piece of steel. I hate it by now. I ended up with a good match for as good as is possible.
In the images below you can see the rear bow is now reasonably close to the fuselage top skin. the front bow is also fine.

The next images show the side spacing while sliding back between the side of the canopy frame and the side of the top fuselage skin. This has to be an absolute minimal gap. If not, the frame will be too wide.
As you can see in the images, it barely touches the skin but passes without touching.

Something that worried me a bit is that the slider bar is slightly shifted to the left if you compare to the drawn blacklines which represent the sides of the bar when centered.

I decided to go for it and drilled the both canopy roller tracks to the canopy frame deck.

To ensure that the width front and back was exactly the same, I used a long scrap piece of aluminum from and check equal distance front and back.

The alignment looks nice and confirms what you see in the plans. Later on you have to grind a bit away of the outer side of the canopy track as it slightly overhangs the end on the side fuselage skin. This is normal ad the plans call for trimming here.

I also measured the distance from the side of fuselage to verify interference with the unerlaying top side of the longeron.

Before I drilled that hole, I had drawn the hole location through the pilot hole in the slider track with a fine sharpie pen.

I then put the right size drill for the final fastener on the hole location and measured from the side, you see that updrilling will not damage the longeron.

You will draw a lot of reference line on the top skin but in the end, it's really adjusting to your situation and getting the frame on the right height in relation to the top fuselage skin. You achieve this by moving the slider track back or forward.

Duct tape works well to keep it temporarily in place.

Drilled the first pilot hole with the final position. you see the hole is nicely centered on the slider track and the hole is a bit left of the center line of rivets on the top fuselage skin.

My biggest worry here was beingcentered on the underlying flange of the F-787 stiffener web.

 When looking from the inside, it actually came out pretty good. The hole is nicely centered on the flange which tells me the rivets are a bit on the inside of the flange of the F-787. A good coincidence that turned out well.

Also in the back, good edge distance on the pilot hole.

Only drill two pilot holes in the slider track and don't up drill or drill the others yet. You still have some playroom for final adjustments now and it's not the right moment to commit yet to these locations.

The frame will still be narrowed because it expands as much as an inch with the plexiglass bubble on. No way you can tell now if you can achieve to get the exact same measurements once the bubble is on.
So leave the pilot holes for now.

After drilling, I re-verified all measurements

Shape looks good.

Front bow relation looks pretty close but leg height will have to be final adjust later when installing the windscreen.

 Slider track looks good

Measuring from the fuselage side for the 1/16 inset from the sides looks ok

Here is my current height of the canopy frame on the slider track. I remeasured all distances after drilling and all looks fine.