Astore canopy air leaks

[montanapilot]

I flew yesterday, and voila - no air leaks at the top of my canopy. However, the side latches are not doing anything. The latches rotate into the receiving arcs - in fact, they're a bit hard to rotate into the arcs because of the position of the arcs (latches catch on the way down) - but they do not touch the arcs at all when they're in place. In other words, they're not pulling the canopy forward - they're just sitting in the arcs.

So, it occurred to me that maybe when the side latches were pulling the bottom of the canopy forward, they were actually opening up the gap a bit at the top - enough to cause the air leak.

So, I don't necessarily want to find myself suddenly flying open cockpit, but I'm concerned that if I retighten them, that I'll open up the air leak. I'm going to tighten them and see what happens, but I just wanted to see if anybody had any input re how tight the side latches need to be - do they need to be simply adjusted so that if the air pulls the canopy back, they'll keep the canopy from opening, or do they need to be able to pull the canopy tight?

A great holiday weekend to everybody. NW Montana is gorgeous right now, with perfect flying weather when the forest fire smoke is not causing our airport to go IFR.

Marshall Friedman

[mackattack]

I defer to others who know more, but I have my side locks rotated so that it takes a fair amount of pushing to get the latches in. And it seems to me that they are up against it and pulling it down slightly (most of the down force is from the center latch however). Yours might need some adjusting ...