Wow what a difference experience makes. I have been dragging my feet getting to work on the canopy skirts, I started them over a year ago when I glued on the canopy bubble but then put them off. This morning I called an RV-7 builder who is about the same stage as me, but has experience building sailplanes. He came right over and in 2 hours we had the skirts mostly fit, man I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.
The skirt was hitting the track some so after Paul left I cut that away some of the skirt, of course it changed the fit of the aft seam so I spent another couple hours fitting things up some more and the seam is nice and tight. The one flaw I see now is that the fore aft orientation of each skirt is a little off so I will have to be careful with the final curve of the aft section.
Paul showed me how to work with a heat gun, it is amazing how you can get the little areas that are lifted off the fuselage to lie down, of course it is a very iterative process when you move one area it affects another.
It is funny how just a little help or a lot in my case can get you moving again. I need to glass the seam tomorrow then I need to work on the final trim line so things line up nicely. I the fore aft and the height of the two sides are a little different but the final trim should take care of that. My plan is to trim the bottom like many other do using the bottom edge of the aft top skin and extending it the length of the skirt, the top I will reference the Sika glue line and hedge above it just a bit since my fillets are less than perfect.
For two weeks I have been trying to figure out where to start on the skirts and in 2 hours Paul helps out and they are almost done, yippee!
This was the fit after Paul left, when I trimmed the part touching the track I had to redo the seam
