I have actually been doing a little work on the canopy over the past week, but it's been so incremental that it really wasn't worth photos. I think I have the front bubble fitting pretty well at this point. The next step is to use the Sika adhesive to permanently attach it to the frame. As I was reading up on Sika, I found out that it's activated by humidity, and on a normal day it has about a 1 hour time before it begins to skin over. With it being 80-90% humidity at this point in the year, I'm afraid that I'd be in a serious rush to get nice filets made before it all started to firm up. I decided to just put a pin in the canopy for now and move on. I'll attach the bubble next summer when conditions are a little better. To give myself more shop space, I went ahead and took the canopy and frame back upstairs to store them. I also took the aft top skin off to make wiring a little easier. As usual, it feels like two steps forward, one step back, but that's the name of the game!
The center tunnel between the seats was going to be really awkward to get wires run through while the elevator pushrod was in, so I bit the bullet and took the pushrod out. I also did my once a month vacuuming of the fuselage. I'll fill it up with more shavings soon enough though.
The last thing I need to do in the left wing before I can close it up is figure out how to run the wire from the pitot regulator to the pitot itself. I didn't really want to drill more holes in this rib, so I decided to make a wire support that just attaches under two of the existing mounting screws. I fabricated a little bracket and pop riveted a wire mount to it. For now the wire is just looped and zip tied loosely. Once I attach the wing skin and the pitot is in permanently I can attach the wire and tighten the zip tie. I drilled the remaining hole at the base of the rib for the other pitot tube. Because the blue pitot tube was more off of the center line than I wanted it to be in order to mate up with the aluminum tubes from the pitot, I took the heat gun to it and reformed it so it landed in a better spot.
There are only a couple of wires that run all of the way to the very back - the wires for the elevator trim servo and tail light. I crawled into the fuselage and zip tied those to the cable tie mounts I had glued in a long time ago. I only zip tied them about half of the way forward, because I think I'll also end up putting the ELT antenna near the tail, so that wire will also need to be captured by the zip ties. I ran the wires up through the left side of the center tunnel.
I'm not 100% sure yet how I want to route the wires from the seating area through the forward center tunnel and up to the subpanel. I think using some of the corrugated tubing will help keep it organized, so that's what I'm trying first. I ran tubing underneath the fuel pump base. It will run underneath the tunnel cover until it gets to the firewall, then it will exit and run up the sides of the firewall stiffeners. It's probably hard to picture right now, but it can't go up the center because the cabin heat valve will be there.
