October 23, 2010

Rex Daniels and Will came by this morning.  Rex has a nice RV-8 that I have had one ride in.  I am encouraging Rex to leave the 8 with me until I finish the 7.  For reasons I can't understand, he seems reluctant, but I'm keeping him reminded of the idea.

The canopy has been set in place with the skirt all around and I still can't get it to fit up to the fuselage evenly.  Working with and tweaking it only seems to make it look crude.  The solution?  Throw it all out and start over with fiberglass.  It all starts with taping off the whole area.

The fiberglass is laid up and allowed to cure.  No, it's not all that simple, but so far there is a lot less time invested than went into the aluminum.  It takes some care to get it strong enough without making it lumpy in the areas of overlap.

The semi-finished product is trimmed and sanded.  Yes, I cheated a little here.  This didn't all happen in one day.  It needed a day to cure, so imagine that you are looking into the future and here is a picture of the cured trimmed canopy skirt...

The cowl will have a snorkel for the forward facing induction and the snorkel will house the air filter.  This is a common Ford air filter that is reasonable light weight and readily available.

I cut the tip (front) off of the snorkel  I will attach the tip to the small intake ring and the removable intake port.

This is just a picture looking at the filter in the snorkel at the air intake end.

Here, the cowling is on the airplane and the snorkel is fit in place.  The cutout is where the intake port attaches to the bottom front of the cowl.

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