Posted Friday, February 9, 2007 @ 04:30 PM  

I am checking with a friend in Southern California to have a mold made for the RF4 and RF5B. I should have a anwser soon. I would like to have more head room. I am 6'3" (190cm) tall.

Posted Saturday, February 10, 2007 @ 06:57 PM  

By the way Weiss quoted 2004 a price of 414 Euro ( = 540 us dol) for a batch of 5 units....

Patrick

Posted Monday, February 12, 2007 @ 09:06 PM  

Can you please show us a photograph of an RF4 canopy taken from your mould?

Posted Tuesday, February 13, 2007 @ 06:04 PM  

Alternative you have your own mould RF4/RF5B done in the US.
Oversize of the mould should not exceed 10 cm = 4 inch in all directions.#

But for making a mould you need an original canopy.
I did one last year for teh rear RF5 canopy and Eugenio for the RF4 + RF5B front.
You need a lot of material, glass, epoxy or polyester.
Making a mould means investing a lot of time and quite a lot of money for material !
And you never know in advance now good the endprodcvut will be .
A front canopy is a critical matter. Keep that in mind !

Guys what I can tell you: the front RF5 canopies made ny Weiss are perfect.
Eugenioīs RF4-RF5B are for sure perfect too.

Think of that before doing anything !
Patrick

Posted Wednesday, March 7, 2007 @ 02:21 AM  

I remember hearing somewhere that the RF3 and RF4 used a pre-existing glider canopy. It might have been from a Schleicher Ka 13 (or maybe a K7?)

Rene Fournier was no fool, it would have been much easier for him to buy canopies off the shelf than to make them in-house or have them expensively blown by a specialist company. My local canopy maker says it is always far easier to adapt the turtledeck to an exisiting canopy than to adapt a canopy to a pre-formed fuselage.

Somebody, somewhere should surely be operating his RF3 or RF4 at a glider/soaring field where he can compare Fournier canopies with 'real' gliders. Maybe that way we could save having to go to all the trouble of making a mould?

Posted Saturday, March 10, 2007 @ 11:51 PM  

The company is still in business so it might be worth calling them to see if they can still make this canopy.

Phone: (562) 430-8108, Fax: (562) 598-0716 or mail to Aircraft Windshield Company, 10871 Kyle Street, Los Alamitos, CA 90720

Steve

Posted Sunday, March 11, 2007 @ 10:06 PM  

This guy Todd sounds like a real good source. My Fournier is experimental, exhibition, so it's no problem where the canopy comes from.

Yesterday I put a straight-edge along the top of my rear fuselage, and by the time it gets to where my head is under the canopy, the canopy has already started sloping downwards towards the nose by maybe an inch and a half, so it seems there's scope for increasing headroom a little without increasing ugliness too much.

I had been going to wait until the CFI World Days in Gap to take a look at Eugenio's canopy, but if this guy Todd can make an optically perfect one sooner, and particularly if he can very slightly increase the headroom, then you can count me in on your order. The most important area is straight ahead, over the instrument panel, where you look forward to land at an acute angle through the Plexiglas. It's hard to get that optially good, although the original Fournier canopy did a great job.

Can you find out what shipping would cost (by the cheapest means) to Perth, Western Australia? Surface is fine. It'll take a few months, but the airplane is not grounded, so that's OK.

Oh and the cut-outs. I really do NOT want them. That's where all the cracks started, by the screws holing the little sliding window, and at the corners if its cut-out. With my fresh-air-in-the-face vent mod (see 'Bob's Mods' on Collin's web site) I get all the fresh air I need.

Thanks for all the homework.

Yours, Bob