October 8, 2006 - Forward Upper Fuselage

It's hard to see, but there is a little angle bracket holding the long rib to the firewall.  I had to match drill the angle to the firewall.  I used Dan Checkoway's technique of removing the center subpanel to get easy access to the angle.  It was a piece of cake with my 1/8" long bit,
Here I'm drilling the Panel reinforcer to the Panel. 
I had to do that, so I could drill the little angle thing to the side of th epanel. 
Then I started working on the little angle brackets that secure the panel to the fuselage side.  This ended up being more time-consuming than I had expected. 
Looking from the front of the panel.  The screw is just sitting in the hole; I havn't put the nutplate on the angle yet.
I had to fashion these side brackets.  They were on the drawing for the Slider canopy, but not the Tip-up canopy.  No big deal.
I match-drilled the side brackets to the forward canopy deck, using the bracket as a template.  I dread having to rivet these little brackets to the canopy deck; it's going to be a bear. 
I was tired of working on the forward upper fuselage so I started on the canopy!  I started by fashioning some spacers according to the drawings.  It took me a little while just to find the stock.  But I did after awhile.  The new blade on the band saw made cutting the aluminum spacers to the correct size a snap.  I'd have saved mucho hours on this project if I had had the band saw and metal cutting blade from the start. 
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