I started the canopy fairing by cutting out the suggested patterns and mocking them up into place. It didn’t take long to realize that the metal fairings weren’t going to fit. Because the rear of the canopy frame was a bit wider than Van’s expected (in order to clear the skin), I couldn’t get a good fit with the metal side fairings. Even if everything did fit, I’m not sure how I would have glued the rear skirts into place since there weren’t any rivet holes in the canopy for mounting. We also found that I was over-aggressive in the initial trimming of the meta side skirts as well. I couldn’t set the final height of the rear canopy before glueing everything together, and I ended up taking too much off. That’s ok, everything can be fixed with fiberglass!
First things first, I trimmed an inch off the bottom of the metal side skirts to give me room for the fiberglass. Then I filled in the pop rivet heads with micro and after it dried, laid a single layer of clothe over everything to cover all the rivets.
Next up was building the bridge between the canopy and rear skin with tape. Try to make this as tight as possible since any sagging in the tape will have to be filled in with micro later to make everything level. I decided at this point to keep things as two pieces, so I applied mold release over the side skirts as well for now. 4 layers of 8.8oz clothe left it flexible, but plenty strong.
Once that was done, it was removed and trimmed down to the right general shape. It needed a few touchups and some more cloth in the corners in a few places, so I fixed those problems before moving on to my first thick coat of micro. I figured it would be easier to sand off the plane, so I held off on permanently installing the skirt until after the first 2 layers of micro were done and sanded.
To install it, I sanded down the last ~1″ of plexiglass canopy, and prepped the side skirts for final installation. I installed the rear skirt by making a very thin flox mixture and then strapping everything in place overnight. I put enough flox in to make sure I got good squeeze out all along the canopy, then cleaned up the excess with rubbing alcohol. Don’t forget to wear your protective masks when working with fiberglass.
Because of the way I taped everything on the sides earlier, the fiber glass lays on “top” of the side skins. I wanted to have it fit perfectly flush. In order to move the skirts inboard, I ended up with almost 20 layers of clothe installed on the inside of the side skirts. I then sanded down the outside until everything sat correctly. Here’s a before and after of what I’m talking about.
I didn’t like the idea of the sliding seal attached with fishing string, so we just filled in the doghouse area of the fairing. I re-taped around the slider track and filled the dog house with flox. After it dried, we just sanded it down and had a very nice fitting cover.
At this point, it was just layers of micro, epoxy, sanding and some primer to get the skirts finished. There’s still some finishing work left to be done, like pro-sealing the edges between the skirts and canopy), but overall I’m happy with how the whole thing turned out.
~Paul
Total Build Time: 910.6 hours