Tonight I spent a few hours finishing the canopy bracing.
Here are the rivets on the underside of the canopy skin. The bottom are pulled rivets and the top ones are solid rivets.
The center brace.
Here’s the right side brace. One rivet will need to be redone as the bucking bar slipped.
The entire frame will get painted with my interior paint, a dark gunmetal gray.
I wrapped up the night by testing out my panel lights.
I’m using a high density led strip that has a silicone diffuser. They are very bright, but will be wired to a dimmer switch on the panel for fine adjustment. I may switch to a more blue light for better night vision. I’ll be adding these strips to other parts of the interior to aid in visibility during night operations, the baggage area in particular.
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.
Today I spent a few hours working on getting the pitot and static lines up to the panel for the Garmin G5. The G5 will act as a backup EFIS to the Dynon.
I had to route the static line from the aft static ports to the front of the plane.
The tube here runs parallel to the rudder cable along the side of the fuselage.
It’s secured with a zip tie and this will be behind a panel that also covers the flap actuator tube.
I had to drill two holes through the bulkheads. This is blind riveted and I didn’t want to drill it off. The alignment took some trial and error.
Here is the routing just next to the pilots seat, this will be behind the side panel.
The final two holes put through the center channel bulkheads. From here, the static tube is routed up and to the panel and to the G5. Also on the panel will be a toggle switch an alternate static source in case of a static port failure.
Today I spent most of the day working on different parts of the panel.
I cut the slot for the hour meter, and a double USB panel mount. These will be for updating both Dynon EFIS displays. Below the USBs will be the cabin heat control knob.
I also received my Garmin G5 that will act as my backup attitude indicator. I also added color caps to all the switches.
I also installed the headphones and microphone jacks. Here are the pilots side.
And co pilots side.
The panel is coming together. A more items to place and cut, and then the panel will be complete!
RV-7 N890GF 