AUGUST 12, 2007
The first layers of glass on the front fairing. There will be seven layers total
A close up of some of the glass work.
More glass work in progress
The glass lay up is done. This shows the first filler/micro.
Tired of glass for awhile so time to work on the sliding section of the canopy. This shows the weird mount that Van's uses on the 7 slider. It is screwed to the canopy and riveted to the frame.
Another shot showing the mount. Note the pin block is not installed yet. More on that later.
This shows the second mount that is used to pull the side skirt (not shown here, more later) towards the fuselage.
Here you can see the pin block (delron inside a steel channel. This holds the rear end of the canopy down when it is closed. Van's instruction were worthless here. They tell you what angles to use to drill the block for the pin but that only works if you mount the channel at the angle that they used. They don't bother to tell you what angle they used so I measured all the angles myself. Came out fine but what a pain.
Here is another shot of the pin block. The pin is attached to the canopy frame. You can see about one inch that sticks out and is welded to the white gusset on the frame.