34-03 - Canopy Front Bow Side-to-Side alignment

[rampilot]

Think I need a front end (bow) alignment... Anybody else run into this? Searched but no joy...

Mounted the canopy frame to the upper fuselage last night. While the plans want us to check the distance between the canopy bow and the upper fuse skin (which is all good in my case), there's no discussion about the bow's side to side alignment in relation to the upper fuse. It seems like the radius of the bend of the bow on the pilot's side is a bit flatter than that of the passenger side. I temporarily installed the panel blanks to insure the radius of the fuse skin was correct and took these pics (hope I inserted these correctly).

Here's the pilot side (note how the bow covers part of the old fuse block location):

And here's the pax side, which looks 'normal' to me:

Not sure if or how to adjust the radius of the bow so they're the same on both sides. My concern is when it's time to do the canopy skirt fiberglass boogie that it will look different one the pilot's side that the pax.

Thoughts?

 

[JBPILOT]

Hmmmmmmm - -

Not sure I ever looked at mine. Don't see a real problem. When You do the fiberglass, you can shape it as needed. Will likely not even know it then. I'd continue on. Others may feel different, or experienced something like that.

John Bender
318.4 hours

 

[DonFromTX]

You might look at other points for the same comparisons, including overlap space on each side. I had to tweak mine to get it to settle in, it bends pretty easily. Bending one place altered it in other spaces.

 

[Dave12]

I think you will be fine with what you have as long as you intend to do the layup, which you have already referenced. If you plan on using the pre-built layup from Viking, you might have some trouble.

 

[wsouligny]

Canopy frame bow

I had to tweak mine like Don from TX. It bends easily, with a little help from a friend. I also had to slightly bend the aluminum piece where the frame bolts to the fuselage using some degree of enthusiasm to keep it from catching on the fuselage skin as it rotated up.

 

[rampilot]

It bends easily, with a little help from a friend.

Yep! "easily" being a relative term... We traced the radius of the good side onto a piece of cardboard, then co-builder wifepilot and I rigged up a way to clamp the side arm of the canopy frame to the work bench. With the support of a tie-down strap and some well placed 'umph' we carefully(!) re-formed the the radius to match the other side. Looks much better now!

Thanks for the help, all!

Now it's 'drill the canopy day'.