Sun 14 March 2004 |
| Today I continued working with the canopy structure. I started with the normal debur, file, smooth and scotch-brite deal. Didn't do all the parts, but made a good start. | 
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| Then moved on to looking at a couple of the sub-assemblies - specifically the latch and the forward hinge area. Reading the instructions it looks like a reasonable amount of fabrication is needed, so this is another list of todo things whilst we are waiting for the fuselage. | 
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| The latch is basically a clever shaped piece of 0.125" AL sandwiched between to AL angle sections. The angle section need fabricating from stock material. | 
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| I drilled the lower bracket with pilot holes and then matched drilled both angle sections together. Worked well. | 
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| The final stage was creating a recess for the rod end bearing that connects to the mini push-rod. The rotary burr (carefully) made the right general shape and the 1" scotch brite wheel finished the job neatly. | 
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| One end of the pushrod could be completed today, drilled out to #3 and then tapped for the 1/4" thread. I had to take this slowly, lots of boelube and backing off the tap to clear out the swarf. | 
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| The finished latch assembly. All came out well, I might consider hard anodising these parts - not for the looks but more for the surface wearing characteristics. I'll see how the rudder pedals come out first. | 
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| I finished the day making some of the little brackets needed. I'm trying a slightly different technique - rather than marking all the drill locations on the actual piece of metal, I've knocked up a to scale CAD drawing of the layout which I then print, fix to the work and use as the marking out. The advantage is the layout is very precise, the risk is the whole alignment could be slightly out. So far it has worked well, I'll let you know how I get on with it.
Dad is back in the shed tomorrow, hopefully finish the seats, a new hole saw for the battery box and continue with canopy preparation. | 
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