It's been a while, but back at it! I'm still waiting on a weather window for painting the interior, so I'm working my way through anything I can that doesn't require the aft cabin structure to be riveted in. Next up is the hinge and attach mechanism for the canopy. I'm sure they're sitting in a corner somewhere, but for the life of me I can't find the big UHMW blocks that came with the kit. Thankfully I have the big block of UHMW that I purchased for the canopy latch modification, and it's the correct thickness. I cut out blocks based on the plans dimensions and laid out the reference holes and drilled them on the drill press. Then I clamped them to the subpanel ribs (I had to take out the center subpanel section) and match drilled them to the ribs.
With the blocks and other thinner UHMW blocks drilled, I cut out and drilled the thick aluminum spacer/stop that goes between them. I put the center subpanel section back in place, because the short ribs need to be match drilled to the blocks. The short ribs can't be drilled as-is though, because they flop all over the place without the top skin holding them. I'll cleco the skin back on to locate and hold the ribs for drilling.
