Finally got a day to work on the airplane. Stripped the fabric off the lower wings and most of the fuselage. Also removed the turtledeck. I sent pictures of the wing structure to Tony up at Specialty Aero to see what he thinks. Hopefully the wings are in good enough shape to justify a rebuild. The plan is to truck the wings up to him while I get busy with the fuselage.
The lower wings have aluminum leading and trailing edges. The only obvious repaired damage was small rear spar splice that was already documented in the logbook. The first rib on that wing had some doublers, and the second rib had a small crack, but that was the only cracked rib I found in either of the lower wings.
Here are some pictures. Please let me know if more experienced eyes see anything else out of the ordinary.
I'm excited to finally get this project going.
Today's starting point:
This is the lower left wing. Couldn't find any problems (except where I lightly "sanded" the tip on the runway at the end of my first flight in it back in 1996...)
Here's the lower right wing repair area. See the cracked rib at upper right?
Today's closing point. 6 hours invested.
The lower wings have aluminum leading and trailing edges. The only obvious repaired damage was small rear spar splice that was already documented in the logbook. The first rib on that wing had some doublers, and the second rib had a small crack, but that was the only cracked rib I found in either of the lower wings.
Here are some pictures. Please let me know if more experienced eyes see anything else out of the ordinary.
I'm excited to finally get this project going.
Today's starting point:
This is the lower left wing. Couldn't find any problems (except where I lightly "sanded" the tip on the runway at the end of my first flight in it back in 1996...)
Here's the lower right wing repair area. See the cracked rib at upper right?
Today's closing point. 6 hours invested.
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