Well today I think I made up for not having done much for the last 2 weeks. 

I wasn't happy with the calculated throws on the bearing shaft so I positioned it advanced a bit and drilled a new

hole for the bolt at 90 degrees.

Here you can see how advanced it is.  After assembling the entire mechanism AND cutting the pins a tad short.  I

discover later that if I hadn't done this it would not have pulled the pins out far enough to release the canopy.

I had fitted the frame and clamped the center splice plate, removed it drilled and countersunk the remaining rivets.

I orginally had drilled the hinge holes to 1/4" and decided to go ahead and drill the hinge for the brass bushings.

I drilled them to 23/64" and then used a .3750 reamer for the final sizing.  If you try to just use a 3/8" drill you might

not get the bushing to be a press fit.  This came out perfect.

I had drilled these holes earlier and was happy with the fit so its time to rivet.

After having the turtle deck skin and the forward canopy skin on and off a million times thus far,  I have concluded

that life would be much nicer if this skin had a slight bend to match the frame itself.  So I marked the skin where the

frame has a distinct bend in it and sandwiched it between two pieces of angle and clamped it very tight.

I then laid it on the edge of a piece of hardwood right at where the bend will be and hit the upper angle with a rubber

hammer along the entire span to get about a 20 degree bend.

Here you can see the desired result.  Oddly enough the clecoes fit about 200 times better in their respective holes.

I'm puzzled why Vans doesn't have you do this here.  Hell they have you beat a trim tab into shape,  with all that

experience, this is a piece-O-cake.  Not to mention it will make your life lots better!

Here is without the bend.

Here is with the bend.

With all this taped firmly into place with fiberglass tape.  I was very happy with fitment and decided to bite the bullet and

match drill the hinge block to the ribs.  Rolling the fuselage upside down I was able to get inside and drill the  bottom

hole.

I then clamped the bearing block with additional clamps to hold it positively in its current position.   I removed the turtle

deck skin and the center section of the instrument panel and I then drilled the upper remaining hole in the bearing block

using my angle drill.  Here is part of the result     ;o)

I then used the 1/8" hinge block to match drill pin hole the in the rib shown here.  This could have been done on

the opposite side of the rib instead of the side I chose to do it from.

(disregard the additional hole in the hinge block, this was a previous missdrill)

Then using the larger bearing block I match drilled the hinge hole in the small rib.

(again, disregard the additional hole in the bearing block as this was a previous missdrill)

Wah Lah!

Note the center rib gets butchered to accomidate all the linkage.  But isn't it sweet!

Here's a pic of the final gap and it seems to work well.  It catches very slightly on 20" of the top center section but

after I beveled the aft edge of the turtle deck skin it works perfect.