I had tweak the bend in the C-763 slide spacer a bit to make it match the profile shown in the plans, but match it does:
I clamped a couple scrap pieces of angle to the table on my drill press, which created a little channel to help me keep all holes in the slide spacer exactly on center. It's a good idea here to check the prospective hole locations against the fuselage skin before drilling, to make sure there's nothing in the way of where you want to put your attach screws. The locations given in the plans worked well except for the most forward screw, which I moved forward by about 3/16" from the specified location in order to miss a rivet underneath.
After that I bent the C-762 slide rail to match the contour of the slide spacer:
Then I centered the rail on the spacer and match drilled them together, using the old clecoes into the workbench trick:
The two pieces of the rail assembly are double flush riveted together, since it has to sit on top of the fuselage skin. The plans call for AN426AD3-6 rivets here, but I found that I didn't get much of a shop head by using that length. I went up to -7 rivets, which worked just fine. I wish the double flush rivets on the rudder were this easy.
After that, I was able to put the canopy frame on the fuselage for the first time:
I found some baby c-clamps at the hardware store, which are now being used to hold the rollers to the canopy frame:
The slide rail is currently duct taped in place while the canopy frame gets tweaked. You can see how the bend in the rail makes the canopy get pulled down when it closes, which is a clever design. I bent the tab in the skin downwards to clear the rail.
I can tell that the canopy frame is going to need some bending to make it fit the fuselage properly. The plans call for the sides of the frame to be inset 1/16" from the sides of the fuselage, so I made this little tool out of some 1/4" and 1/16" ply I had laying around. Tomorrow when the glue dries I'll use it to check the dimensions of the side rails.
