Canopy Release (3)

I finished up the canopy release mechanism.  The center UHMW block gets bolted to the channel on the subpanel, so I had to put nutplates on the channel.  This would have been far easier to do prior to riveting the channel in place, but there was no way to know exactly where to locate the block until it was all together.  Since there's no way to get a bucking bar in the channel, I cheated and upsized the nutplate holes to 1/8" and used pop rivets instead.  I used a big drill bit to put some divots in the back of the UHMW block so it would still fit over the pop rivets and be flush on the channel.  One other thing I had to do that's not in the picture was carve out an oblong hole in the channel to give room for the bolt that holds the release arm to the pivot.

The whole mechanism has to come out until after the top skin goes on, otherwise there's no way to buck some of the top skin rivets.  The handle that goes aft through the subpanel is not shown in the video.  I shortened it considerably (the stock handle is long enough to go all the way to the instrument panel) and am just going to secure it using an adel clamp on the subpanel.