OK, well, like I said, Bob gets the credit for giving me the general idea how to do it. I worked out some of the design details for this installation myself.

You will notice three black squares on each side of the ledge where the canopy rests. These are the latches into which three hold-down hooks in the canopy fit. The hooks are made from BVM canopy hooks cut down to match the picture below. I used three per side on this installation because of the length of the canopy.

Underneath the ledges are square plastic tubes (KS or "Plastruct" stuff from the RR section of the local hobby store) held in place with Aeropoxy. The square holes are cut through the ledge into the square tube. They are as wide as the ID of the tube and are as long as necessary to allow the hooks to seat into them even if the alignment is a bit off when the canopy goes up or down.

Inside the square plastic tube is another square tube, this one being brass. At the location of each hole, a corresponding hole, of the same size, is cut into the top of the brass tube. At the front of each hole, a "notch" is made shaped like the drawing below. This hole/notch in the brass tube forms the "lock" mechanism. Notice how when the inner brass tube is forward, the holes in the inner tube line up with the holes in the ledge/outer tube and the hook can go right in. Then the inner tube is slid back and the notch grabs the hook. Because of the taper in the notch and the slope on the hook, the inner tube grabs the hook and not only pulls it down tight, but also centers it. In the video, you can see that happening when the locks close if you look closely. Finally, you can cut off half of the inner tube in between the latch areas (forming a brass "U" ) This will allow the square brass tube (normally quite stiff) to follow the curve of the ledge/outer tube if there is one (there is on the F100 and the inner tube wouldn't even go in until I did this).

The inner tubes are actuated by 1" cylinders which are setup with the max forward travel such that the inner holes line up at that point. There are no stops on the rearward travel so they go as far back as possible to tightly hold the hooks. The canopy is raised and lowered by a separate 1 5/8" cylinder at the back of the canopy just in front of the hinge.

The canopy up/down cylinder and the lock cylinders (one per side) are actuated by a UP-3 valve - the one that does the gear doors open when the gear is down and doors closed when the gear is up. The lock cylinders are connected such that the inner tube aft (locked) corresponds to doors closed and the inner tube forward (unlocked) corresponds to doors open. The up/down cylinder is connected such that the (landing gear) strut up position on the valve corresponds to the canopy down and the strut down position corresponds to canopy open. From a normal locked position, when the UP-3 valve is moved to the other position, the locks open (doors open) and then the canopy goes up (strut down). Move the UP-3 the other way, and the canopy goes down (strut up), and the locks close (doors closed).

Several other things to note. First, its best to fabricate all of the hooks and latches, and then place them temporarily in place on the canopy rails. Close and lock the canopy and make sure all of the hooks engage. Then push the hooks tight up against the locks (making sure that it doesn't move) and make sure that the hooks are all being held down tight. Adjust as necessary (takes several iterations - trust me) and tack each hook in place with slow CA as you get them right. Only THEN do you lock each in place with Aeropoxy. Doing it any other way results in a LOT more work fixing the hook/latch alignment []

Second, I faced the hooks toward the front on this installation because that's how the full size F100's are setup. The problem with this is that when the latches close, it tends to push the canopy aft. With the hinge as designed, the canopy could easily slide back 1/8" or more, resulting in the hooks getting loose. The solution here was to put a "tab" on the canopy rails right at the aft end that fits into a slot in the rails such that when the canopy closes, the tab fits right against the aft end of the slot and keeps the canopy from sliding further aft when the latches engage. This works fine, but an easier solution would have been to make the hooks face aft and the latches slide forward to lock. That way, the latches closing would push the canopy tight up against the forward wind screen. Live and learn...

Finally, the square tubing fit neatly under the ledge in this model, but if your model doesn't have the ledge, you could simply glue the outer square tubing against the side of the cockpit to form the latches.

Any questions?

ps, the image didn't seem to upload that well. You can find the original here: http://www.people.vcu.edu/~rhklenke/...py_details.jpg