I riveted the mounting angles that hold the canopy latch handle as well as the lock. I removed the lock’s cam so that it doesn’t get painted since it would just immediately get scratched up. Afterward, I primed this area with some self-etching primer.
I also drilled the lower empennage fairing to the fuselage and horizontal stabilizer. The two holes in the fuselage go through the longeron and replace a couple of rivets. I’ll add standard nutplates here just like the forward holes in the upper empennage fairing. The rear nutplate in the horizontal stabilizer goes through the flange of the rear spar, and I can use a standard nutplate there as well. The forward hole just goes into the horizontal stabilizer skin, and the inner rib would make it a pain to install a nutplate there. My plan is to order a couple of Click Bond adhesive mounted nutplates to install here.
Unfortunately, the fairing doesn’t fit perfectly. The vertical flange fits nice and tight against the side of the fuselage, but there’s a fairly large gap in the middle between the fairing and the horizontal stabilizer. I’m going to spend some time with a heat gun to see if I can reshape it to fit better.
