Tonight I dug deep into the canopy fairing. I started by sanding down the filet until it
was smooth and ready for the layers of fiberglass to come. Then I cut 7 pieces of glass fiber every 1/4
inch from ¾ all the way to 2 ¼. I made
each one progressively longer starting from about 38 inches all the way up to
52, since on the outside edges you don’t need as much curve in the fairing. Basically these got layered with the thinnest
one first gradually thickening up to make a smooth transition for the curve of
the windscreen. I started by mixing some
epoxy with flox and black dye and painted the full surface so I had a smooth
black surface from the inside. Then as you
can see I started with the first layer which was followed by 6 more all with
black dye. When finished to where I had
a fairly smooth transition I removed the yellow electric tape (but still had my
PVC Pipe tape in place) to make clean edge and then applied peel ply to help
stop runs and give a better finish once dried.
This was pretty stressful part of the project and I will only see
tomorrow what I came up with. From what
I can tell it looks pretty good. From this point forward I have days and days of sanding/filling/sanding/filling/sanding/filling.. Until it looks amazing. ;-)
If there was an after market, pre-molded canopy fairing, for the leading canopy edge of the RV7, would you have considered this route instead?
ReplyDeleteHey Tim, I am sure some would but I probably would not in this case. Each RV-7 Canopy is fairly unique due to different construction techniques, so a pre-molded fairing wouldn't fit perfectly out of the box. To fit correctly it would still require some fiberglass work. In the end, I enjoyed this part of the project and am happy with how it turned out. - thx
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