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edweeks

Member
Help! Returning to my plane (parked in transient parking) this afternoon, I discovered that a chunk (slice, sliver) of my canopy had broken off. I have no idea how this happened but it happened while parked because I found the broken off fragment on the ground near the plane. The broken part is from the very bottom of the right side of the rear edge of the the tip-up canopy.

I flew the plane home -- no problems. The brain trust at the airport says that I should stop pounding my head against the wall and wailing against the unfair fates because it is not that big a deal. They say that I can epoxy the piece back on and that it would be as good (or nearly as good) as it was before (which was very good).

Is this correct? Could I glue this chunk (sliver, slice) of canopy back on the lower rear edge or do I (shudder) have to replace the canopy? Do I go back to railing against the unkind fates?

Ed
 
This happened to the tip-up canopy on my last RV... somebody tried to close it for me and dropped it, breaking a chunk off one corner. I glued it back on with Weld-On, but it eventually broke again and departed in flight (didn't notice it was gone until after I landed).

I hadn't yet put the Targa strip on the canopy, so when I was doing that fiberglass work I also filled in the missing canopy-corner with a thin wedge of foam and flox/microballoons. I liked how that turned out so well that I actually cut a matching chunk out of the other corner of the canopy and did the same thing on that side! After it was all painted, you coudn't tell that it hadn't been designed that way. I liked the fact that a mis-closed canopy no longer posed a danger of further glass cracking, since all the force was on the flox/foam filler piece. Since it was all under the Targa strip, it was invisible from outside. It also couldn't be seen when the canopy was closed.

Here's a photo I found of the Targa strip in the process of being made... you can see the chunk of foam/flox through the glass. Click the image to see it full size.



Hope this helps.

mcb
 
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