Joshua's RV-9A Project

Finished up the subpanel installation by fitting and drilling the angle clips that hold the outer corners of the instrument panel to the forward canopy decks.  Also drilled the center section cap strips to the vertical members; snapped off another 1/8″ angle drill bit, now I’m down to just the short stubby one.  I think this results from excessive bit wobble in the cheapo angle drill attachment…next time (ha!) I’ll splurge on a real angle drill with a small head.

On to the canopy hinges…fabricated the plastic blocks and aluminum spacers according to plans.  Apparently, the stub ribs weren’t supposed to be riveted to the subpanel yet, since they need to be out of the way for some match-drilling at this step.  No big deal–I just removed the center portion of the subpanel, leaving the sides in place, and a nice open area in which to wield the drill…worked well.  Once the appropriate drilling was done, the center part went back in to be drilled.  I kept the top skin on for as much of this as possible, moved forward three holes when necessary to provide a gap to work/drill/see/clamp in.  I wasn’t able to drill the hinge pin hole through to the stub rib, because my 1/4″ drill bit is too short, and I can’t get the drill in the correct place to make a straight hole…I’ll pick up a longer bit, which should solve the problem.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Canopy & Frame. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.