I’ve always liked the idea that Charles Dixon had for attaching the skirts to his viper but the “poly fastener” that he used is not available here in NZ so i went hunting for a similar product locally and came up with this Duralock 2 material. It comes in 3 parts and this part shown here is the aluminium base that i intend to glue to the hull.
This is the second part of the duralock system and is the insert that fits into the aluminium base shown in the previous picture. This is a plastic insert. The Duralock 2 comes in 4 meter lengths and what i have showing here is only a sample i got given to test out.
This is the third section and is also plastic. Its the insert that fits into the insert hehe
As you can see here I’ve fitted the insert into the aluminum bracket. The skirt will fit between the aluminium bracket and the plastic insert but just to show how it all goes together i have left the skirt material out for now. The Dura lock 2 much like the Poly fastener that Charles Dixon and Duncan are using is usually used for holding the PVC sheeting when greenhouses are made.
The aluminium bracket is extremely light and i’m picking its probably just as light as the other “poly fastener” . the bracket i will be gluing to the side of the hull with 3m 5200 marine adhesive just like Charles did but i will probably also screw it in certain places as well for 2 reasons. 1 is that the aluminium bracket once fitted will never have to be removed to change skirt segments so screwing it will not mean i have to ever undo the screws, therefore i can screw them in place and then seal them then they will never let water in but still hold everything intact for good. and 2) is that i may also fit some brackets to the other side of the screws in the plenum chamber area so that my steering cables can be held in place. Oh and obviously i’ll have to shape these brackets so that the air feed holes aren’t blocked off like this picture shows.
Here the bracket is attached to the skirt
Both inserts attached to the inside of the skirt finger.
So as you can work out by these pictures, replacing or fitting a skirt finger to the craft only requires me to pop the two inserts out and back in again , making life easy and quick. There will be no unscrewing things to fit or replace a skirt which is good as that eliminates me having to drill at least 142 screw holes for 71 skirt segments.
