Cutting canopy, step 1

Almost 2 months has passed, and I’m finally ready to start cutting the canopy. There have been too many other things to address this summer, and I wanted to have a clear mind before starting to work on this. It’s an expensive part, especially with shipping from Seattle. 😉

Anyway, the first thing I did, was to make a stand to hold the canopy while cutting. I cut a couple of plywood plates, so the roughly matched the contour of the canopy ceiling, then padded them with some foam pipe insulation. Very simple and works perfectly, taking alle the stress out of canopy while cutting all around.

After having protected thee canopy on the inside with kitchen film, I peeled back some of the outer protection film, and mark the first cut line.
Then I carefully trimmed the film, and taped it down while making a nice clear cut line with the tape.

Cutting it was a piece of cake. Just make sure to fix the cutaway with tape every 15-20 cm, so there I no stress.
As the instructions pointed out, I sanded the cut nice and smooth right after cutting.

My wife Camilla helped med lift the Canopy back onto the fuselage. The fit was already pretty nice, but the canopy was still too tall and too wide in the front.