Canopy fairing
Finally. Some decent weekend weather. Saturday morning I took my mother-in-law for her first flight in the plane. We did a simple loop around the Seattle/Everett area. She seemed to be enjoying it thoroughly.
After she left, I worked a bit on the wheel fairings. I used a drum sander in the Dremel to round out the corners of the openings and then I installed them on the plane again. I went for a short flight to confirm they were working OK. It was super bumpy, but it seems that the 5000′ 75% cruise speed is now around 154 knots true. Pretty sweet. About an 11 knot increase with both wheel and leg fairings in place. One more leg fairing, wheel fairings, and then the intersection fairings. Should see maybe another 5-10 knots?
Sunday was nice again, so I went for a short flight around the patch. I was hoping it would be smoother to get some better speed numbers, but it was still slightly choppy at 5000′. I just messed around a while and came back in.
Once back at the stable I decided it was time to make a fiberglass fairing for the canopy. I got some advice that the curve is compound and that a strip of aluminum wouldn’t work. So I laid up 3 layers of the Rutan bidi about 1.5″ wide with the intention of cutting it down to 1″. I don’t want a huge fairing and don’t see a need to cover the screws.
I closed the canopy tightly and stretched some saran wrap over the area. It was hot, so I was moving quickly to lay up everything before the epoxy set. I put some Dacron over the top to keep the filling and sanding later to a minimum. Next time I go down, I’ll pop the fiberglass off, trim it to size, fill and sand. I’ll then rough up the plexiglass and stick the fairing to it with some epoxy. It’ll be great to be rid of the whistle.
Here’s the bird in it’s current fairing state:
