Quote:
Originally Posted by Electictracer
I have priced a windshield from Tod's and its outside of my budget. This means I'm making my own.... Any information anyone has on this topic would be helpful.
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Simplest and quickest would be single curvatures, bent into place cold. The rear portion would be one piece, and the windscreen would be another. Aft of the rear portion, you'd fair in the canopy to the rear enclosure, to prevent separation at what would otherwise be a corner. This would require a fiberglass molding (or cool but difficult, a hand hammered aluminum) transition piece.
To blow a bubble canopy, the best do-it-yourself results seem to be free blowing, in which the surface is not restrained by a mold. I've had good luck with this for bubbles smaller than the typical canopy, using plexiglas. I have never been able to get polycarbonate to form a good heated bend, let alone a compound curvature (but others have). (But for cold single curvature bends, it works great, and 3/32 material would work well for your application.) (Blown canopies need to be a little thicker to allow for thinning out where stretched most.)
(The issue with plexiglas [acrylic] is that it can crack -- in a crash, for example -- whereas polycarbonate will not.)
Here's a thread that describes several do it yourself methods. There is a small pusher aircraft (experimental) with a single curvature canopy (I thought it was the Taylor Imp) but I can't find it. The Imp appears to have slight compound curvature.