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Fiberglass Canopy Fairing ...

bkervaski

Hellloooooooo!
Testing
Looking at all the build steps the fiberglass lay-in on the canopy fairing seems to be the most intimidating, to me at least, never worked fiberglass.

Any experiences anybody would like to share on this beyond the videos out there by Vans and a couple others?

Also, I assume nobody every replaces the canopy plexi, since from what I can tell you end up with fiberglass bonded to it in this step. I guess you can repair scratches in this material?
 
Here is a recent thread of one builders experience.

http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=147490

I finished my canopy a couple of months ago using the instructions in the manual and it came out great. I had some experience with fiberglas before but not much. The little experience I had did help however, so if you have never done and work with it before I would make up some little test piece just to practice on first. Nothing fancy, just enough so you get to put some resin on some cloth and lay it up, mix some micro balloons and lay it up, sand them a little and then your ready.

My only problem was the dye I used. The person at West Marine who sold me the dye told me how much to use and it was nowhere near enough. Once I hit the cloth with the dyed resin, the jet black resin became light gray. It still has a nice look from the inside but not a nice solid black.
 
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