Category Archives: Fuselage

Canopy Top Slider 

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Time: 4 Hours

The canopy frame will slide forward/backward on three slider rail. On on the top aft skin and two on either side of the cockpit running from the bulkhead where the passenger sits to the windscreen rollbar. I started on the aft top slider first per the plans. The slider will be two peices riveted together to make a lip for a part on the canopy frame it to slide onto. These two parts will have a bend in them at the forward and to drop into a receptacle. As a canopy slides forward the aft end will drop into this receptacle lowering the canopy onto the skin, and when you open the canopy the aft and will slide up and after on the rail lifting the canopy up and clear of the skin. First up is to match the angle of the receptacle on the lower part of the slider. 


Van’s lays out all the measurements for the rivets in the screws that will go lengthwise on this slider. There is a total of nine screws that will be used to hold the slider onto the top skin. There was a lot of drilling, deburring and countersinking for these two parts. You will notice that I had to countersink both the top and bottom of the slider. That’s because the bottom will sit flush on the top skin and the rivet heads could not protrude past flush. So when I squeeze the rivets the shop head with squeezed into the bottom countersink keeping it completely flush.

Once I had the slider completed I did some measurements on the top skin from for bulkhead to the after located to establish centerline. I’ve been matched up the centerline of the slider to those lines I drew on the top skin and taped the slider firmly into position.


I then used the screw holes in the slider to match drill the top skin placing a screw, washer and nut in as I drilled which meant climbing back into that tailcone!

From this point you would normally start working on the next two slider rails, unfortunately the attachment hardware for the canopy which is needed to align these two rails is back ordered by Van’s. So I will postpone the rest of the steps and move onto another task.

Fiberglass Tasks and Engine Mount

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Time: 4 Hours

The next little (relatively speaking because I hate fiberglass) task I want to finish up before getting too deep into the finish kit are the rudder bottom cap and the HS tips. The rudder bottom had one side filled but not sanded so that’s where I started today. 

I used various tools like the finish orbital sander and my new fine work sanding sticks I got from Cleaveland Tools at OshKosh. 

These tools allow me to get into the sharp corners and get a nice clean edge. 

I used them to get inside the HS tips as well. 

So once I finished that little bit of sanding, there will be tons more, I decided to venture into the finish kit. I decided to do the engine mount first since I had just taken the top skin off to work a little easier on a wire. With the skin back off I have good access to the firewall where the mounting bolts go. First up was to enlarge the holes I drilled way back when building up the firewall and forward area for the 3/8″ bolts. 



I used good drill bits and plenty of Boelubewhick helped to drill though the tough stainless steel. Even with that I had a nasty burr on the stainless. The best way to clean that up was with a Dremel and a carbide tip. Once those were done I put the engine mount in place with the bolts, washers, nuts and a temporary cotter pin. Surprisingly it fit perfect without having to tweak steel at all!

Canopy Arrives

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Time: O Hours

Since I ordered a little darker tint canopy from Van’s when I ordered my finish kit the manufacture just drop shipped it to me directly. I got the call from the shipping company that it was there and I worked it out so that I could just drive by and load it up rather than scheduling a delivery day and wasting my time all day waiting for them. 

Of course I had to open it up just as soon as I got it to the shop! 


This thing is beautiful and scares me to death as I don’t want to damage it and have to replace it. 

USB Port’s and Fuel Line

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Time: 4 Hours

I had two sets of wires for the two Dynon Skyview screens left deal with. The backup battery wires which already have a connector that will plug into to battery that I will buy at a later date. The other is the USB pigtail that you use to plug a flash drive into to update the Dynon software and instrument data. I could have just left the wires lay behind the instrument panel and access them through the back panel door.  I decided to add two panel mounted USB ports to make this a cleaner installation. I decided the best place for these would be next to the hobbs meter inside to forward baggage area. This would allow me to do the updates by just opening the baggage door and inserting the flash drive.

I curled the one foot-long cable to make it more manageable behind the panel.

I drilled the holes for the USB port and filed them to get a good fit using the flash drive as a guide.

I’m happy with how these turned out and it will make the updates real easy. The next thing I wanted to work on was to cut the fuel line on the outside of the fuselage. When I have the wings on an in-place I marked these lines to be cut when I have more room with the wings off. So I cut the lines put the nut and ferrule on and flared the ends. 

I put some red plugs in the ends to keep dust out. It’s been fun catching up on these little task and not messing with the fiberglass for a little while, man I hate sanding fiberglass! 

EMS Wiring

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Time: 8 Hours

I had a great day in the shop yesterday working on the EMS(Engine Monitoring System). This Dynon module allows you to electrically input information from many different items like oil pressure, fuel pressure, exhaust gas temps and other things that you want to see on your screen. The really cool thing about Dynon is that they allow you to make widgets on the screen in various configurations for the inputs that you connect. For example on my RV I will have my pitot tube heated which is controlled by a switch. However I would really like to know that the unit is getting the power and heating once I turn on the switch. The heat controller has a signal wire, that when the pitot is getting electricity and heating becomes active, that I will connect to one of the EMS inputs. Then I can create a widget on the screen so that when the pitot heat is off it will be black and when on it will be green so that I have a clear indication that it is working. So first thing to do was remove the shelf I made for the module and drill for the attach hardware, nutplates in the forward side and holes for screw/nut on the aft side since they will go through the cross member brace. 

For the rest of this installation my process was to determine which wires need to stay behind instrument panel in which wires needed to go to the firewall forward.  Once I had that information I determined the length of the harness so that I would have easy access to it should I ever need to work on it and clamped it to the baggage area panel.

With the harness connector secured I started the process of separating the wires that would go to the firewall forward and the ones that needed to stay behind the panel. 

As I found the ones that needed to stay behind instrument panel I went ahead and made those connections to the respective wires, like the pitot heat controller and other items, with a butt splice connector. 

The wires that were heading to the firewall forward I just hung over the firewall to organize them.

One thing that helped was taping the layout for a fuel injected four-cylinder Lycoming set up to the rollbar and highlighting the completed wires so that I knew which ones had been completed.

Dynon builds these harnesses to meet many different configurations so I will end up with a bunch of wires that won’t be needed. So those wires I flipped to the opposite side to organize them. I could cut or remove them however I thing I will just bundle/secure them out of the way for future adds if needed. 

Once I had all the wires connected behind the panel I connected the harness to the module in ran the wires that needed to go to the firewall down through the gear tower and forward through the firewall penetration hole. I cleaned up the wires with zip ties and coiled up the unused wires and secured them as well (they look like a colorful doughnut). 


The second harness on this module has wires that run to the firewall forward for the EGT (exhaust gas temperature) and CHT (cylinder head temperature) readings. I split these out to run left and right, the #2 & #4 cylinders are on the left side of the aircraft and the #1 & #3 cylinders are on the right side of the aircraft.  

On the left side I wrapped the 4 wires in heat shrink to protect them before they exited the firewall.



Three of the wires from the EMS go to the left and right fuel level capacitors. I drilled holes in the left and right side of the fuselage and used a rubber grommet to protect the wires it will put a three place Molex connector on these similar to the other connections I have done. 

I made a measurement to see how much extra wire I would need for the fuel level wires and made the cut. For these wires I will have the majority of extra length on the fuel tank side vs the fuselage side since I don’t want to have the extra wire showing in the cockpit since this area will be somewhat exposed.  


So now the only wiring I have left in the left wing will be the OAT temp probe, if that’s where I end up installing it.