After completing the last part of the Interior Paint, I went back to working on the Upper FWD Fuselage. The first thing I did was cleco/rivet the F-14106 Wire Channel to the Tunnel Sides (with LP4-3 rivets) and the Sub Panel (with AN470AD4-4 rivets). Here is a closeup of the part installed on the airplane.
The plans next instruct me to install the F-01468-L & -R Instrument Panel Attach Brackets to the left and right Forward Canopy. Here is an overview of the Bracket for the pilot left side.....
.....and a close up of the four AN470AD4-5 rivets that attach it to the Forward Canopy Deck.
Next, I installed the Forward and Aft Canopy Decks on the left and right sides. To do this, proseal is first applied the “channel” created by the F-01421B-L & -R Aft Canopy Deck, F-01421A-L & -R Forward Canopy Deck and the F-01470-L & -R Fuselage Side Skins. Here is how it is depicted in the plans and where/how the proseal is applied.
I applied the proseal to the entire length of “channel” that will be covered by the Forward and Aft Canopy Decks. Once the proseal was applied, I clecoed the Aft (first) and the Forward (second) Canopy Decks to the Upper Longeron Assembly. The Canopy Decks were then riveted to the Longeron Assembly using 31 CS4-4 and one LP4-3 blind rivets. Shown below are the left Forward and Aft Canopy Decks installed on the plane.
The last part of the install was to set the five AN470AD3-3.4 (I used 3-4 rivets because the measured perfectly) to the Sub Panel. Now, because the plans initially have you rivet the Instrument Panel Attach Brackets to the Forward Canopy Deck, the Bracket gets in the way of the rivet gun and set when installing the rivets with the manufactured head on this side (except for the first one). However, when you have the rivet gun on the forward side and the bucking bar on the aft side of the Sub Panel, there was plenty of room for both. So, I decided to set the rivets this way....shop head aft.
The right side Forward and Aft Canopy Decks were installed in the same manner. Here’s the completed right side Canopy Decks.....
.....and to the Sub Panel.
