Decided it was time to install the two shin whackers (the steps) which are passed up through an elliptical slot in the fuselage skin and bolted in place using AN4 bolts. I discovered the clearances were a little tight for both steps (probably due to the powder coating on the steps) which required filing away a little material from the fuselage skin. Came up with the idea of using O rings on the steps to protect them from being scuffed as opposed to placing an anti-slip covering over the powder coating which would hide it's beauty. Two years ago some rubber O rings were installed as an experiment to see how well they would hold up ... not well they cracked, so switched to Neoprene O rings and they seem to be holding up well after over a year. Not sure how well these will hold up in actual use … if they don’t, will cut them off and switch to a traditional non-skid covering.
One of the items I had been putting off was trimming the aft edge of the canopy on the left side. I have known about this for quite a while and had been putting it off but have now finally gotten around to tweaking the fit. This was a self-created issue, in that, it seemed having the canopy slightly skewed allowed it to fit better on the canopy frame… so I went with that knowing the aft edge on the left side would likely touch the rear window, and it did. Coarse sandpaper was used to remove a little material from the aft edge of the canopy so the canopy could be closed without touching the rear window. Once the optimum fit was achieved, the aft edge of the canopy was sanded more using progressively smoother sandpaper until the edge was polished smooth.
