The Mike Melvill cowls I’m using are unusual in that they have a gaping hole each side near the canopy. This turns out to be so that air flowing over the strakes  can get to the cylinder bumps more smoothly. Its also a nifty place to stick a couple of vent lines and who knows what else.

Just before we go there I’ll show you how the lip layups worked out.

Pretty ugly eh?

Not perfect right?

Here’s one side trimmed. OK we have a few gaps. It seems the upside down layup can slowly droop if you aren’t watching it for 3 or 4 hours. I’m not sure how to fix this. Faster curing epoxy? I could have made a fancy jig but other inverted layups have been fine. It may have been the 5 plies and the 3.5″ width. Next time I might risk letting the epoxy go off a little more. Another approach would be to do it in several separate layups with peel ply. Then the weight would be less. I only mention it in the event YOU might be doing such a layup yourself one day. You know who you are <grin>.

Despite this, the top cowl fits really well. The clecos are easy to put in place and it is sitting down well in position without a lot of tension. I’m going to trim and add just a little flox in the gaps. Then after the camlocs are installed much of the existing lip can be trimmed away. So I’m moving on.

This is the hole that needs a fairing. I bought some blue foam to the hangar to carve out some shapes. After 30 minutes fiddling I could see it was going to take too long. I drove home and got the pour foam!

My other considerations was if I made beautiful lightweight fairings, some klutz in the future would put a heavy hand on the thing and it would fail. I could be that klutz! Plan B was this pour foam which is rock solid. I’ll hollow it out a fair bit later to save weight but its still going to be very strong.

Beautiful stuff, it just needs a bit of shaping.

Many hours and one sleep later….

Here’s the other side. The Melvill cowls seem to be about .5″ different from one side to the other. I challenge you to pick it!

To cut the glass out I’m using plastic on the hangar floor. My improvised bench above is just too narrow. No matter how much I clean up the plastic is really a one use item. I’ve gone for a 4 ply layup. Now wait, I know thats overkill but the lip needs to be 5 ply, I’ve gone for 4. If I did one ply on the fairing and then 3 or 4 on the lip I would have had a joggle to fill with filler. I just went with the 4 overall and know that I can really take a lot of that heavy pour foam out later and it will be super strong.

Here’s the foil layup. Of course I’d had the cowl off before the layup, cleaned the edges, recovered in grey tape and prepped the area.

Right side all done and peel plied.

Left side done. I think it looks better than in these photos. Tomorrow I’ll clean up and then have to remove the carbon lip I laid the last 1.5″ on to. Then I make another lip underneath again.  Wish me luck.