Several planes needing repairs (May 19,2008)

The twin engined Cub needs the exhaust stacks repaired.  One of the flexible exhaust stacks broke.  I ordered some replacement stacks and got the wrong size.

The P-51 needs the torsion block reglued within the wing.  I'm not sure what effort will be required.  Maybe as simple as injecting some epoxy.

The PT-19 received slight damage this past weekend.  On the third flight of the day, there was some kind of trouble shortly after takeoff.  It wasn't responding perfectly to control movements and was occassionally doing weird stuff.  It went a good way out before a good bit of fighting got it aimed back at the runway and I hollered out I had trouble and aimed to set it down crosswise to the runway (into the wind) rather than risk going around to line up.  The goal was to get it on the ground as soon as possible with no thoughts of any go around.  It took a lot of fight to hold it level and bring it back from several rolls and get it to the field, it needed a bit more power to make it but wouldn't respond, and it glided into the sloped rough about six feet off the runway and bounced up and then actually onto the runway.  I noted quickly some deformity of the wing above one of the wheel struts.  Yep, it was the strut mount that had not been rebuilt.

The only issue reported about this ARF was that the wing strut hardwood mounts were simply glued to balsa ribs.  The other strut had come loose only after a few flights and had been easily repaired because the harwood block had broken loose and allowed working through the hole and installing ply wood false ribs carrying the load to the leading edge and spars.  After making a pattern for these, extras were made for the other side of the wing but the block wouldn't break loose so was never dealt with.  Now it will be.  There is little damage and the fix will be easy, especially that I've got the ribs.

The cause of the damage is attributed to radio interference.  After a range and battery checks, the plane was left on the table turned on with transmitter off.  At several instances over the next few minutes, the surfaces went spastic.  After a short while, there was no more interference.  Whoever else was using that frequency was not at our field and was likely flying a park flier at one of the local parks.  I'd love to be flying on 2.4 spread spectrum but can't afford to replace all the radio gear.

And of course, the Taylor Craft still needs its entire fore section rebuilt.  I've discovered that a large hanger of planes requires a good bit of maintenance.

Add one more to the repair list   (June, 2008)

It was a reasonably quiet weekend afternoon at the field with only a few fliers when the Ultra Stick Lite roosted in the top of a large oak tree.  After takeoff, turning down wind with three axial rolls, and a turn back upwind the plane didn't clear the treeline.... not even a complete circuit of the field.  The next morning it was retrieved with the help of one of my young carpenters who climbed the tree like a cat squirrel.  The fuelage had fairly minor damage but the wing was totalled.

I'm not sure what happened.  Known is that I wore for the first time a pair of polorized sun glasses from the grandkids for my birthday.  Whether they distorted my vision, depth perception or contrast of objects I don't know.  Another possibility is that the motor quit.  The G20 is not noisy and of course was out beyond the tree line and there were two other planes in the air.   It could have died and set into a glide path that I'd simply not detected because the plane was coming directly back at me.  Of course the other possibilty though extremely doubtful of course,  is that it was pilot error. :(  Who knows?  I've always been able to accept crashes as part of the hobby... but I confess the Ultra Stick Lite was a favorite plane and I pined its loss.