Time: 2 Hours
In combat aircraft there are usually 2 or more rear view mirrors that are curved to the shape of the windscreen for “checking your six”. Many builders have adapted various commercial car mirrors to fill this need. Some builder have been lucky enough to find vintage mirrors from places like eBay. I decide to try my hand at making some and started with a prototype. First up was how to mount it to the rollbar. I decided to use some aluminum angle and bend it to the shape of the rollbar. I needed to cut some notches in one side of the angle so I could bend the other side.
I then primed and painted the angle to see how it looked. I decided to try some small magnets, usually you wouldn’t want these close to the panel as they could affect the instruments but my ADAHRS are in the back of the tail cone. I used some 5 minute epoxy to attach four magnets.
Then I added some low profile Velcro tabs to the three wings on one side of the angle.
I had bought a 12″ x 12″ sheet of 1/8″ thick acrylic mirror and used the bandsaw to cut out a shape based on some measurements I took from the rollbar. I then sanded the edges round and attached the mirror to the angle with the other side of the Velcro.
I then tried it out while sitting in the seat to see how it worked and was very happy. There will be some tweaking needed on the next model but otherwise it will be pretty close to this one.
The nice thing is that this can be moved to any location on the rollbar as needed and rotated to get the best view. They are also nice to be able to see the status of your back seater.