I finally got around to finishing up the canopy. It took a lot of finagling to get all the holes in the canopy to line up with the tapped holes in the frame well enough for all the fasteners to go in nicely. I ended up enlarging most of the holes to 11/64" to avoid putting stress on the plexiglass from the screws. Some of the holes had to go as large as 3/16"! Anyway I got the whole canopy screwed on, including the one hole that caused me so much trouble previously. I just used a longer screw and a nut.
The last thing to do was adjust the notches in the canopy latch so it could be locked and unlocked smoothly. Initially they were way too tight to close at all, so I had to do quite a lot of filing until the latch actually fit over the pins in the fuselage.
This was also the first time I ever actually sat in the plane!
My assistant was less excited.
After many, many iterations of gradually filing open the latch slots, it eventually began to operate nicely. Then I sanded down the locking tab a bit until it also fit. This is just a simple piece that can be padlocked to the tab on the outside of the latch, preventing it from being opened.
With that, the canopy is finally done!
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