But hold on…it was my “practice canopy”!
When I bought the untouched F1 QB kit from Vince a little over a year ago, we found that the canopy had been stored in some way that it developed a big divot in the top - like someone stored it upside down in a hot place while it was sitting on a 4x4 or something. Not fixable according to Airplane Plastics, so we sourced a new (tinted) one from them, and reached the point this week where it has been warm enough to start fitting. As anyone who has carved on an RV-like canopy knows, the task looks daunting - if not impossible - before you get started. Nothing sits in its final location until you carve on it, but you can’t carve on it until it’s in its final place - or can figure out where to carve. So you sneak up on the fit… and sometimes you learn that you have over-trimmed it because you didn’t know what you didn’t know.
I have fit quite a few canopies in my life, and still take it with caution - and since I happened to have this extra canopy that was destined for the scrap bin, yet would serve as a fit-dummy to the frame, I decided to use it first. After doing all my trimming to the point where I was ready to split off the windshield, I transferred what I had learned to the actual “good” canopy, and very quickly had it fitting perfectly. Then I had to figure out where to do the “big cut” - so again I draped the practice glass on the frame first, and developed a process for figuring out the cut line.
It was while doing the big cut on the practice canopy that it shifted on the table and “snap” - I had a six inch crack. I wasn’t too broken up over it - the thing was already unusable for flight….and it was still going to serve its purpose for procedure development, so I stop-drilled and taped the crack, and pressed on. Got a great fit, learned what I needed, and did the same thing (without the crack of course!) on the final piece of plastic, and I am very happy with the fit. And… the practice piece is still available for further “practice”.
When you buy a Sonex canopy, they won’t sell you just one. The canopy costs a couple hundred bucks - the shipping is well more than that - so they require you to buy two because so many people screw up the first one, and who wants to pay the shipping twice? It costs the same to ship two…. Now it might seem a luxury to buy an extra Van’s canopy, but do the math. Vince tells me that a canopy sells for about $1450. The shipping for the new one I got (from Ohio) was about $650. Building a Rocket (or modern RV) is going to run close to $200K these days… so that extra canopy doesn’t look so bad if you had to pay the shipping for a new one all by itself. Not saying it’s something everyone (or anyone for that matter….) SHOULD do - but it’s worth thinking about “outside the box”…..
Pics:
“Yup - you can just sit there on the floor you cracked canopy you….”
Stop drilled and taped (on both sides) so that I could keep using it for fitting…not totally worthless!
Much mo’ better … the final tinted canopy fitting is coming along nicely!
When I bought the untouched F1 QB kit from Vince a little over a year ago, we found that the canopy had been stored in some way that it developed a big divot in the top - like someone stored it upside down in a hot place while it was sitting on a 4x4 or something. Not fixable according to Airplane Plastics, so we sourced a new (tinted) one from them, and reached the point this week where it has been warm enough to start fitting. As anyone who has carved on an RV-like canopy knows, the task looks daunting - if not impossible - before you get started. Nothing sits in its final location until you carve on it, but you can’t carve on it until it’s in its final place - or can figure out where to carve. So you sneak up on the fit… and sometimes you learn that you have over-trimmed it because you didn’t know what you didn’t know.
I have fit quite a few canopies in my life, and still take it with caution - and since I happened to have this extra canopy that was destined for the scrap bin, yet would serve as a fit-dummy to the frame, I decided to use it first. After doing all my trimming to the point where I was ready to split off the windshield, I transferred what I had learned to the actual “good” canopy, and very quickly had it fitting perfectly. Then I had to figure out where to do the “big cut” - so again I draped the practice glass on the frame first, and developed a process for figuring out the cut line.
It was while doing the big cut on the practice canopy that it shifted on the table and “snap” - I had a six inch crack. I wasn’t too broken up over it - the thing was already unusable for flight….and it was still going to serve its purpose for procedure development, so I stop-drilled and taped the crack, and pressed on. Got a great fit, learned what I needed, and did the same thing (without the crack of course!) on the final piece of plastic, and I am very happy with the fit. And… the practice piece is still available for further “practice”.
When you buy a Sonex canopy, they won’t sell you just one. The canopy costs a couple hundred bucks - the shipping is well more than that - so they require you to buy two because so many people screw up the first one, and who wants to pay the shipping twice? It costs the same to ship two…. Now it might seem a luxury to buy an extra Van’s canopy, but do the math. Vince tells me that a canopy sells for about $1450. The shipping for the new one I got (from Ohio) was about $650. Building a Rocket (or modern RV) is going to run close to $200K these days… so that extra canopy doesn’t look so bad if you had to pay the shipping for a new one all by itself. Not saying it’s something everyone (or anyone for that matter….) SHOULD do - but it’s worth thinking about “outside the box”…..
Pics:
“Yup - you can just sit there on the floor you cracked canopy you….”
Stop drilled and taped (on both sides) so that I could keep using it for fitting…not totally worthless!
Much mo’ better … the final tinted canopy fitting is coming along nicely!
