Desert Rat
Well Known Member
A while back, a thread popped up about wearing UV protection while flying and it seemed like quite a few people were surprised to find out that the standard Vans canopies have UV protection built in. Yesterday it occurred to me that I had some canopy scraps left over so I put together a little show and tell just for fun.
So for folks with older airplanes who are wondering just which canopy they have, or maybe you didn't know about this and have been wearing a balaclava or slathering on the sunscreen every time you go fly, here's some data points to do with what you will.
Back in the old days the standard canopy was just clear, but at some point a UV option was developed. Specifically, you could pony up some extra $$$ and order the SC-15 which has a very subtle light gray tint and significant UV blocking. When I tried to special order it with my finish kit I discovered that at least on the RV7, sometime prior to 2020-ish, Vans had gone to the SC-15 as the standard. No special order required.
Picture 1 below is a scrap of clear lexan (bottom) and a scrap of SC-15 canopy (top). When you see them side by side, the tint is much more obvious.
Pictures 2 illustrates the UV blocking properties by the simple experiment of holding the canopy scrap in front of my son's auto-darkening prescription glasses in natural sunlight for the few seconds it takes for them to darken. It takes UV exposure to make glasses go into "sunglasses mode" and you can clearly see the stripe that refused to tint due to being blocked by the UV protection in the canopy piece.
Like I said, take this for what it's worth, I just thought it was kind of cool.
So for folks with older airplanes who are wondering just which canopy they have, or maybe you didn't know about this and have been wearing a balaclava or slathering on the sunscreen every time you go fly, here's some data points to do with what you will.
Back in the old days the standard canopy was just clear, but at some point a UV option was developed. Specifically, you could pony up some extra $$$ and order the SC-15 which has a very subtle light gray tint and significant UV blocking. When I tried to special order it with my finish kit I discovered that at least on the RV7, sometime prior to 2020-ish, Vans had gone to the SC-15 as the standard. No special order required.
Picture 1 below is a scrap of clear lexan (bottom) and a scrap of SC-15 canopy (top). When you see them side by side, the tint is much more obvious.
Pictures 2 illustrates the UV blocking properties by the simple experiment of holding the canopy scrap in front of my son's auto-darkening prescription glasses in natural sunlight for the few seconds it takes for them to darken. It takes UV exposure to make glasses go into "sunglasses mode" and you can clearly see the stripe that refused to tint due to being blocked by the UV protection in the canopy piece.
Like I said, take this for what it's worth, I just thought it was kind of cool.
