MacNab
Well Known Member
This isn't really a RV building tip, but I thought this would still be the best place to put this.
I came up with a mod for my Cleaveland Aircraft Tool canopy cover that I thought I would share after some positive feedback from a couple of RV'rs when they saw it on a recent excursion.
I've never liked the way that the wind could get under the large exposed side of these covers and others like it because of their four point securing method and the way that the wind could slowly rotate the cover around the fuselage and off of the canopy. It left me wondering what I was going to come back to the next day after putting the cover on when the wind was blowing real good. On one occasion the cover was almost completely blown off after a hard blow while the plane was parked for a couple of days at Eagle County airport in CO. I decided to try to find a better way to secure the sides down and at the same time prevent the cover from rotating around the fuselage in the wind.
I ended up with this:
The additional strap is a bungie cord with one of the hooks removed and cut to the proper length. It was then fed into some short sections of 1" tubular nylon tape that I borrowed from one of my rock climbing runners and the tape was then bar tacked onto the cover at the seam. The bungie hook goes into the notch on the fuselage cut for clearance of the flap actuator rod attachment on the flap.
I took these photos after the cover went through a pretty good blow yesterday at the Prescott, AZ airport. Seems to have passed this small test. When we roll the cover up from the rear of the plane to the front when we remove it, we just lay the bungie cords up into the cover roll as we roll it up to keep them out of the way and prevent them from banging on anything when we put the cover on the plane. Works good so far, but I've come up with a little better way to secure the cord end into the nylon tube by simply sewing the tube end shut around the looped and baled cord end inserted into the nylon tube. The current design goes into a hole, melt cut into the side of the tube. I thought this would offer more paint abrasion protection, but on application decided it wasn't needed and that the other method would probably be stronger.
Anyway, there it is. Try it if you like it. Otherwise fire away...
I came up with a mod for my Cleaveland Aircraft Tool canopy cover that I thought I would share after some positive feedback from a couple of RV'rs when they saw it on a recent excursion.
I've never liked the way that the wind could get under the large exposed side of these covers and others like it because of their four point securing method and the way that the wind could slowly rotate the cover around the fuselage and off of the canopy. It left me wondering what I was going to come back to the next day after putting the cover on when the wind was blowing real good. On one occasion the cover was almost completely blown off after a hard blow while the plane was parked for a couple of days at Eagle County airport in CO. I decided to try to find a better way to secure the sides down and at the same time prevent the cover from rotating around the fuselage in the wind.
I ended up with this:
The additional strap is a bungie cord with one of the hooks removed and cut to the proper length. It was then fed into some short sections of 1" tubular nylon tape that I borrowed from one of my rock climbing runners and the tape was then bar tacked onto the cover at the seam. The bungie hook goes into the notch on the fuselage cut for clearance of the flap actuator rod attachment on the flap.
I took these photos after the cover went through a pretty good blow yesterday at the Prescott, AZ airport. Seems to have passed this small test. When we roll the cover up from the rear of the plane to the front when we remove it, we just lay the bungie cords up into the cover roll as we roll it up to keep them out of the way and prevent them from banging on anything when we put the cover on the plane. Works good so far, but I've come up with a little better way to secure the cord end into the nylon tube by simply sewing the tube end shut around the looped and baled cord end inserted into the nylon tube. The current design goes into a hole, melt cut into the side of the tube. I thought this would offer more paint abrasion protection, but on application decided it wasn't needed and that the other method would probably be stronger.
Anyway, there it is. Try it if you like it. Otherwise fire away...
