March 25, 2017 – I’m going to call the windshield fairing good for now. I still need to address the interior of the fairing; I’ll do that after the aft skirt is to the same point.
As I stated in the last post, I started the aft skirt by filling the gap between the canopy and the fuselage top skin. I decided to try using pieces of cereal box taped in place.
To mold the fairing for the track, I taped up the metal fairing supplied in the kit and taped it in place.
Since there is a step between the canopy plastic and the cardboard, I decided to lay up a couple of layers of fiberglass tape up against the aft edge of the plastic.
After that was set up I used microballoons to smooth the gap, much like on the edge of the windshield.
I did the rest of the layup after that, then broke the canopy free.
After some sanding, I didn’t like the thickness or the width front-to-back of the fairing, so I reinstalled the canopy and added some carbon fiber with some regular fabric on top of that.
Removed the canopy again and started sanding on it. I also marked the aft cut line. I think 4 1/2″ is a decent dimension for the fairing, so I cut it there.
There’s still a LOT of work to do on this fairing. I think this is a lot harder than the windshield fairing, so I’ll just have to keep at it.
Time: 12:40