Time for the big day. Permanently fixating the rear skirt to the canopy.
First I did a final matchup to see if all looked well. Did some more sanding and filing but finally got happy with the result. The final epoxy layer to close pinholes will be done before painting so I'm not worrying of getting it absolutly perfect now.
De first stage in sikaflex bonding is preparing the surfaces that will be glued together.
On the canopy itself and on the touching side of the rear skirt, you need to apply 2 products. One is an aktivator that cleans and degreases the surface, the second one is a kind of primer paint to increases the adhesive strength of the sikaflex itself. I made some test pieces some days ago and boy doesn this stuff stick together well... I could not seperate the halves even with brute force.
In the image below, the primer is applied on the touching surface and drying.
It's colored black so you may want to mask the edges to avoid spilling on the canopy.
This is the inside of the rear skirt.
While it was drying, I cleaned up the epoxy glue on the wingtips (reinforcement strips on the inside were epoxied in some days ago), ran the countersink in the holes again to make them clean and start rivetting the nutplates on the wingtip.
With the primer cured and dry, I applied a zig-zag of sikaflex glue on the primer.
Then positioned the rear skirt on it, clecoed it in place trying to remove as much of excess sikaflex in the cleco holes as possible.
Beveled the edges for a smooth look and finally but some elastic straps over to keep it in a thight match position.
I hope that when I release this it will be the shape it took. (and yes, it finally did so it was a good plan).
