- Joined
- Oct 12, 2014
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Well, I'm lucky to have gotten my new bird home in one piece. I must be living right or something.
Went to the airport to diagnose my wonky airspeed indicator (fixed, it was a blocked pitot line) and to look at the bungees, as the plane has been a bear to keep straight on the ground and appeared to be sitting one wing low. I never did look at the bungees, because I found something much worse.
It's clear it's been cracked for quite awhile, judging from the rust on the edges. It also looks like the opposite side was already repaired long ago. A few hard landings (unfamiliar airplane combined with a bad ASI and pilot inexperience) must have put it over the edge. Amazingly, it held all the way home from Memphis (12 hours of flying) and only finally let go, apparently, on my last landing. Thank God the plane's home now, instead of stranded 500 or 1000 miles from home.
Any advice? First order of business, of course, is to get the gear leg off the plane. What is the best way to jack or hoist the plane? I imagine it'd be best to remove both sides so I can carefully inspect the other side, and weld up the new one exactly symmetrical. Or perhaps I should just completely replace both sides? It's not the standard Starduster gear, with Cub style bungees in streamlined covers between the gear legs instead of up inside the fuselage. There's a round tube inside the cracked streamline tube, which no doubt is why it held as long as it did (and why it didn't fail completely, making things much worse). I guess I could repair it as is, or go with a standard SD gear, or something completely different?
Went to the airport to diagnose my wonky airspeed indicator (fixed, it was a blocked pitot line) and to look at the bungees, as the plane has been a bear to keep straight on the ground and appeared to be sitting one wing low. I never did look at the bungees, because I found something much worse.
It's clear it's been cracked for quite awhile, judging from the rust on the edges. It also looks like the opposite side was already repaired long ago. A few hard landings (unfamiliar airplane combined with a bad ASI and pilot inexperience) must have put it over the edge. Amazingly, it held all the way home from Memphis (12 hours of flying) and only finally let go, apparently, on my last landing. Thank God the plane's home now, instead of stranded 500 or 1000 miles from home.
Any advice? First order of business, of course, is to get the gear leg off the plane. What is the best way to jack or hoist the plane? I imagine it'd be best to remove both sides so I can carefully inspect the other side, and weld up the new one exactly symmetrical. Or perhaps I should just completely replace both sides? It's not the standard Starduster gear, with Cub style bungees in streamlined covers between the gear legs instead of up inside the fuselage. There's a round tube inside the cracked streamline tube, which no doubt is why it held as long as it did (and why it didn't fail completely, making things much worse). I guess I could repair it as is, or go with a standard SD gear, or something completely different?
