Canopy Frame & Engine Controls

This weekend I spent almost 20 hours working on the plane.

I started by rigging the mixture, throttle, and prop cables to the engine.

Here’s the mixture bell crank. The mixture cable is attached to the right side. I got it all adjusted so that the knob reaches the stops as the servo side hits the mixture stops.

I then spent a couple hours test fitting and adjusting the prop cable. Similarly, I needed to adjust it several times so that the stops were reached without any issues.

Here is a top down view looking at the cable attached to the prop arm. The bolt will need to be adjusted, it fully clears the mechanism, but it’s still too close for comfort. I’ll add another washer under the bolt head to increase the clearance.

The throttle cable was a lot easier, the alignment was almost spot on. I’ll need to do some slight adjustments on the servo arm.

Final adjustments to all this will be after the first engine start. But for now, everything is set from the factory.

Here’s the panel test fit and the cable bracket clamped to the panel temporary.

I then spent about 5 hours riveting the canopy frame and skin together.

Here’s the top of the canopy skin. The missing rivets are for the frame bracing. I will rivet the sub panel and lock-in the forward section of the fuselage before final riveting the braces, just to make sure it’s all perfectly aligned.

Here’s the bracing from the inside, the bottom rivets are riveted, but the top ones will be later.

Here’s the panel installed so that I can test fit the frame. I might need to make a slight adjustment where the G5 is installed on the far left. It might slightly interfere with the craniotomy frame tube that runs the length from left to right along the top of the panel.

Canopy Frame & Engine Controls

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