Starting the Windscreen Fairing

The windscreen fairing is a gradual transition between the top of the fuselage and the windscreen.  It’s made by laying up many layers of fiberglass of various widths.  Here’s a snapshot of the plans, which shows a side view of what the fiberglass layers look like.

Before laying up the fiberglass layers, we had to do a few other things to prepare.  We riveted on some small aluminum “clips” to keep the windscreen from moving.  I then taped off the area where where the fairing will go, cleaned, scuffed, cleaned again, then used some phosphoric acid to etch the aluminum, to improve adhesion of the epoxy.  I then mixed up some epoxy and microballoon filler to fill the small area between the bottom of the windshield and the fuselage top (per the picture above).  Here I am inspecting before applying the filler mixture.

Here I am applying the filler.  It’s dyed black, because we’ll be able to see it through the windscreen from the inside.

While I was working on this, Kelly was cutting all the pieces of fiberglass cloth we’d need to do the fairing.  Not a particularly fun job, as you can see here.