ilikeplanes,

The turtle deck and canopy addition were easy. I basically drew a straight line on the plans from the top of the fuselage at the rear, to a point where I though the rear edge of the canopy should go. From there, I extended the lines of the formers on the side view up to meet this line, with the one at the cockpit angled back some. I measured how tall these additions were and cut 3/32" balsa wood sheeting to this measurement, the thickness of each former. I rounded the top of these former extentions, glued them in place on each former and then sheeted it with 1/16" balsa sheeting. Once they were glued in place, I cut three notches in them for the three 3/16" square balsa stringers and glued them in place. Very quick and easy, maybe took an extra ten minutes of build time. Couldn't have added hardly any weight.

The canopy was off a .40 sized great planes Extra 300, trimmed down to fit. Looked great and I think it improved my knife edge performance some. My stock Hog will knife edge, but with the added side area and extra rudder throw I could knife edge loop and hold altitude in a knife edge pass at a much slower speed.

I did have a problem with my pilot trying to eject during a blender and he took the canopy with him. I guess he didn't have faith that I would pull out in time. I found the pilot but not the canopy. He was back flying the next weekend with a two liter soda bottle canopy over him the next weekend. After another two weeks of low pull outs he decide to bail out again, but after he ejected the canopy he decided to stick with the plane. He has been flying ever since without the canopy.