Brief Description: Wing tips part 7 and canopy latch
The RV-8 wing tips are solid laminate with no stiffening elements built into the skin. As a result the surfaces can buckle in flight or when someone leans on them on the ground. This can cause cracking in the paint. To remedy this many builders layup stiffeners on the skins. I saw an idea on RV-Hangar.com to use foam rod as cores over which fiberglass skins are laid up to create stiffeners. The foam rods are what is used for making expansion joints in concrete. I bought 50 feet on Amazon.
I cut four pieces of foam rod to length and hot glued them to the underside of the top surface of each wing tip in the aft section that buckled when I pushed on the top of the wing tips.
Next I mixed up some epoxy (one pump each of resin and hardener), Micro (one spoon full) and cabosil (one spoon full) and used it to apply fillets at the base of the foam rods where they met the wing tip skins. I shaped the fillet using a combination of my filleting spoon and my gloved finger. After the fillets were applied I mixed some epoxy resin with no fillers and painted it on over the foam rod and uncured micro fillets in order to seal the foam so that it won't absorb the resin when I layup over it.
Installed the Fly Boys Accessories secondary canopy latch on the canopy and fuselage. This involved fabricating two aluminum plates that sandwich the "hook" that catches the "tang" that bolts to the canopy frame. This secondary latch stops the canopy from sliding so far back that the pilot can't reach it from the flight seat
