Here is a picture of my RV-6 fuselage. I have followed the normal order of building and have the empennage and wings completed. The sheet metal work on the fuselage is about 90+% done, even though it looks like I have quit a bit left to do. If you look at the stack of parts on the table in the foreground, you can see that I have all the parts made for the canopy deck. Most of the cockpit sheet metal parts have been fabricated, like baggage compartment walls and floor, seats, electric flap housing, rudder pedals and battery box. I have fitted the windshield frame and brace and have built the rear track for the sliding canopy.

I have started designing the instrument panel. Also you will note that there is a document laying on the table with the loose parts. It's a copy of the RVator Log. I refer to Log issues often to remind of the great building tips and articles that are contained within them. I really think you and the other leaders of the Twin Cities Builders Group do a fantastic job.

What is shown is a full sized plot of the design, taped to the panel blank. As a result of evaluating this mockup, I decided to make a few changes. In particular, the radio and transponder were located too close to the center rib on the canopy deck structure, so I'm going to move them to the right.

I may do a little shuffling of the engine instruments as moving the radios kind of upsets the esthetics. The ergonomics are generally ok, but it would be nice if I could shift the flight instrument cluster a little to the left, as the artificial horizon is a little to the right of the center of line of sight. Unfortunately, there is another rib that would interfere if I moved the instruments. Some people modify the rib to accommodate the horizon, but I'm not willing to do that.

This summer was mostly a pause as far as working on the project was concerned. I did, however accomplish a couple of important milestones. I had decided a while back that I should take apart the used O-320 engine I bought as I was uncomfortable not knowing what it looked like inside. It turned out to be a good decision. One of the steel pins, that are pressed into the crankcase halfs to retain the main bearings, was broken off and it had gouged the crank. There was some fretting in the crankcase mating surfaces and several other parts needed to be replaced. All the cylinders had exhaust ports cracks and needed to be reconditioned. I sent all of the parts out. The crank cleaned up at .003" under and had no corrosion, so it was repaired and yellow tagged (whew-a big sigh of relief; if you ain't got a crank, you ain't got nothing). I had the crankcase remachined and line bored. I also purchased new Millenium cylinder assemblies. I got everything reassembled and now I have confidence in the engine. As the photos show, I have it installed on the airframe. The other major milestone was getting the plane up on the landing gear. Now when people come to visit, they say it looks like an airplane!

I had been putting off doing the sliding canopy. I feel that it is the biggest obstacle to completing my airplane, so I decided to delay all the other tasks and attack the canopy. After reading many excellent hints on canopy installation (e.g. Jim Cones articles) that I had collected over the years, I took the plunge. I had already mounted the windshield frame/rollover bar and the rear track, so I started on the canopy frame and side tracks.

I was disappointed to find that the canopy frame was a lousy fit to the fuselage and therefore would require considerable "finessing" to make it work out correctly. As pointed out by an article written by Scott McDaniels (RVator, 5th issue, 2002), one has to be careful when bending the frame as a bend in one location often affects fit in another location. My simplistic explanation for this is that the 4130 tubing is very stiff but the canopy frame isn't a very rigid structure. I used a number of different techniques to reshape the frame and often had to improvise temporary fixtures to ensure that bending was limited to the areas desired. It took me about 20 hours to get the fit right. I have a 2 ton arbor press and that proved to be a blessing for adjusting shape of the lower side bows.

The next thing was to drill the pin blocks. I have been corresponding regularly with Larry Dodge, as he and I are very nearly at the same point in construction. Larry sent me an unpublished article that he had put together on the technique he used to get the correct compound angle drilled in the blocks. His method was pretty much foolproof and certainly would work, however, I decided to try a method that I thought would take less time. I knew that I only needed to get the angles correct in two planes. I measured the angle in the vertical plane as accurately as I could with a digital protractor and used a protractor with an arm on it to measure the angle in the horizontal plane. I have a small drill press that has a spindle that can be rotated in the lateral plane, so I rotated that to pin angle that I had measured in the vertical plane. I then adjusted an elevating vice to the small angle in the horizontal plane. I tried out the setup on a couple wooden blocks to fine tune things. In order to mitigate the tendency of the drill to go off angle when entering the workpiece at an angle, I cut a flat using and end mill before actually drilling the holes. One other thing I did was to bend the brackets that the pins are welded to to ensure that they were aligned with the centerline of the fuselage. Otherwise, it would be necessary to widen the holes in the lateral direction. The pin blocks worked okay the first time.

I'm trimming the canopy now. I built an 8 x 8 foot hot box, heated with an electric space heater, in which to do the cutting. I was surprised at how much torque it takes to cut the plexiglass. It runs down the batteries in my cordless drill in just a few minutes, so I'm using a regular electric drill to drive the cutoff wheel. I had read some conflicting information about the cutting technique to use. One school of thought is to make multiple passes, cutting a little deeper with each pass. The other method is to cut completely through and continue to cut through as the tool is advanced into the workpiece. I thought the multiple pass method sounded good, so I used it for while. It was a continual battle to keep the disc running true due the grabbing in the cut. It also was taking a long time to make the multiple passes. I tried the one pass method. The one pass was much easier for me, with the tools I'm using. It reduced the time to make cuts down to about 25% of the time it was taking with the multi-pass method. It also has proven to be much less fatiguing to do it this way. I'm convinced that specific methods of doing things vary with the individual, so my recommendation is to keep an open mind and try both to determine what works for you. '

With all the tape and plastic protection on my canopy, it made it hard to tell if the canopy was actually touching the canopy frame. I was trying to get a rough idea of how much to take off the canopy for the next trim iteration. First I tried shining a flashlight on the area, but that didn't help much. I then hit on the idea of using a laser pointer. I shined it on the fore/aft bow and adjusted the angle and vertical location where the beam hit the bow until a reflection showed up on the inside of the plexiglas. Then, I moved the beam up and down slightly. If the light on the bow and the reflection on the plexiglas appear to meet the canopy is touching the frame. They aren't in contact when the beams don't meet. This doesn't result in an exact measurement of the gap, but is capable of discriminating trends in the amount of gap as the beam is moved to different locations along the frame member.