Sometime it seems like stuff that looks so simple ends up taking forever. I spent the day prepping for canopy skirts, which is a continuation of what I was doing yesterday.

I needed to devise some way to bridge the gap between the airframe and the canopy on both side rails and aft by the turtle deck.

First I tried to just bridge the gaps with packing tape, but I really wasn't happy with the results. Basically, the gap is too big for packing tape to remain taunt and not sag. I know guys have solved this by smoothing out the sags with modeling clay and whatnot, but that seems iffy at best. I thought about this for a while and decided to see if I cold find something semi rigid to bridge the gap.

I ended up down at the Yard Store, and was able to score a roll of .030" vinyl. I thought it might be a little bit thicker than ideal, but the it occurred to me that since I'm bonding this on with sika, it might be nice to have an extra .030" under there for expansion of the Sika.

Cut the vinyl to fit, taped it in place, and then covered the entire area with 2 layers of mylar packing tape. I made sure my masking job was up to par and then waxed everything with 2 coats of turtle wax for a mold release.

I had an 0600 check in at work this morning, and by this time it was after 6:00 pm and I was getting pretty tired, so I elected to wrap it up for tonight. I'll start applying fiberglass plies tomorrow.