Canopy Page 2
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The canopy skirts do not fit perfectly along the fuselage. I am sure it is due to my lack of installing them perfectly, but I am hoping I can get a composite builder friend of mine come over and help me get a good fit... |
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The canopy latch was a breeze to install... |
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The overall fit of the canopy / frame / latch is good... |
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The weather finally cooperate enough to do some glass work... I recruited Paul Klahn, Velocity builder, and composites guru... First we taped everything off, then we put some electrical tape inside the windshield to keep the micro from spooging under... |
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We put a bead of micro-balloons under the front edge of the windshield to fill the gap, and to give it a nice fillet for the glass to lay on... |
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We measured everything first, then went to Paul's house and made up the strips. He had a big roll of the stuff that we laid out on some plastic, them wetted out, and then cut... We basically just took some pre-pregged strips back out to the airport... |
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The windshield to fuse joint is two layers thick, and we have two lap joints there. That was because once we cut the fabric on the 45 we didn't have length to do it in one strip... |
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The portion that goes over the top of the windshield is three layers thick... We still need to do some glassing over the canopy skirt, but I'm not sure how I am going to do it yet... |
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The fit is very nice... I am very happy with the way it turned out... |
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I did some more work on the skirt to get it to fit good... I still need to join the two halves in the back and then do the final fitting before riveting it all on... |
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Here I have the two skirt sides joined at the back and a slot cut for the track... I have a bit more to do here though... |