Canopy part 1: paint and wiring

TLDR

• Primed and painted Canopy interior
• Wired interior canopy lights

Detail

I started to work on the canopy last few days.

Painting

While access was still easy, I painted the interior of the canopy over the weekend.

I am using Steward System’s EkoPrime and EkoCrylic solution for the interior paint. The system is water based and is not super protective to oil, fuel etc. But since this is for the interior, I don’t think getting fuel into the cabin is a huge consideration.

I am fairly new to using spray guns. It’s a learning process during my painting. I definitely used too much primer, as the solution started dripping in some areas. I sanded them off after they became dry.

The next layer is paint. I first coated a thin layer, and waited 15 minutes before the second layer. This prevented dripping and the final result came out pretty good IMO. It’s definitely not the best paint job, but it’s acceptable in my eyes :)

Before painting

Cabin Painted

Doors Painted

Lights wiring

After the paint was dry, I ran the wires for the cabin lights. This has to be done before fitting the canopy, otherwise I will lose the access to the wiring conduit once the canopy is attached to the airplane.

The conduit was a little tight, and it seems something is jamming inside the conduit and preventing the wires to run through. I used some safety wire to feed through the tunnel and cleared it a bit, then fed the wire through.

First the wire is fed through the left side of the canopy conduit

I forgot to take pictures of the wiring itself, but it’s a pretty simple set up: I joined the 2 rear cabin lights in parallel, and joined the 2 front lights in parallel as well. Then I got 2 positives and 2 negatives. I labeled them and tested them using my 12v power generator. Everything worked.

Rear lights working