Canopy

Ok, so I decided to give the side skirts a shot, I had always planned on glassing in the rear skirts but the side skirts seemed like a no brainer.... right????

So here I am match drilling the top of the skirt to the inside canopy skirt as a reference point.  After which I cleco on the side of the canopy frame and match drill on the fuse.

You can see the result here ....

and here....

and finally here.

Which caused me to mount the canopy side skirts in a new location.... here.

So begins the great skirt fairing project.  My goal is to make one big ass fairing that covers both sides, and the back of the canopy in one big fairing in less time than it takes to obsess over a crappy fitting metal fairing and with MUCH better results.

As with all new endeavors, this project starts with the purchase of a new tool.  This way if it doesn't work out, I still get a new tool out of the deal :-)

I picked this up from Sears tap and die rack.  For $11 you get a nifty screwdriver tap thingy and a #6, #8, and #10 tap.  I needed a #4 tap so I bought that too, but this handle was just to cool to pass up.

The first thing I had to do was figure out a way to attach the inside canopy skirt without all those nasty clecos.  I could have used pops ( keeper rivets ) but I didn't want parts of them floating around inside the canopy frame after I finished.  I had some #4 screws left over from a previous wing tip attach project so I used those.  The nice thing that #4s buys you is the ability to use your #40 bit and CS tools.

I used my deburring tool to do a slight machine countersink of the canopy to hide the head of the #4 canopy attach screw.  I drilled the hole out to 5/16s using my plexi bit and drilled the hole in the inside canopy skirt to a #27 ( you will need to do this to eventually fit a #6 screw in there anyway ). 

Then I inserted a stainless #4 with a nut in every other hole.

Next I used my #40 machine counter sink to countersink the lower holes and tapped with the #4 tap and inserted a #4 screw in the bottom of the inside canopy skirt in about every 4th hole.

The end result is a flush mount where the canopy now contours to the side of the frame without clecos sticking out everywhere and the damage is nominal since all these lower holes need to be drilled out to #30 anyway to allow for the final attach pops. 

And so begins the taping.  This is easy as it requires no deburring, priming, or drilling, just three rolls of 2 inch masking tape, and one roll of duct tape.  I laid down a layer of masking tape horizontally and vertically to cover the surface to keep the duct tape goo off the canopy and fuse parts.

Next I went over everything again with duct tape to bridge gaps and form a flat surface for the glass to mold to, and then finally another single layer of masking tape to smooth over the rough edges of the duct tape.  This process actually goes pretty fast as there is no priming, drilling, or grinding involved :-)

 Above and below is the finish taping job.

Next.... time to lay some glass.  My plan of attack is to put two layers of 8oz bid glass to start with to give the surface some real structure.  After that sets up I will lay up two additional layers of carbon and bid to finish it off.  This should be plenty strong enough to hold the shape and keep if from flapping around at Vne.

On to the big canopy fairing project Part DUX