flyerrider
Active Member
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2010
- Messages
- 25
- Reaction score
- 0
Hi everyone. While this is my first post I have been silently lurking in the forums for the last several months learning as much as I could about whatever I could. January 7th was the day that one of my childhood dreams came true; my 10-200 airframe arrived from Texas. I'm sure several of you saw it on Barnstormers and on Moleski.net if you're an Ultimate fan. I got it for what I can only regard as a steal and while the timing couldn't have possibly been worse (buying a house, our first child due in 6 weeks, my Lancair coming out of interior and needing final assembly, a dune buggy project that needs to be finished, etc, etc, etc.), the deal was too good to pass up. I also have always dreamed of having an Ultimate but want a kick to the groin (which my 8 month pregnant wife attempted when I told her about my new purchase! more than another 5-10 year project. So, here she sits in my garage. Over the last week I have had it assembled and have spent the majority of my weeknights and weekends sitting in it making airplane noises, analyzing every sheet of the plans, and crawling over every inch of the airframe with a magnifying glass inspecting every weld, glue seam, joint, nail, staple, tube, and stick of wood. While the original builder did what I can only describe as an unbelievable job building this thing, the second owner (whom I bought it from), while being a great guy and a pleasure to deal with, probably could have used a couple lessons in basic fabrication. What little he did on the airframe in the couple of months he had it needs to be redone. These items basically are the lower wing mounts (NOT happy about this!) forward fuselage skins, interplane struts, canopy flange, harness mounts, tank mounts, and the rudder. Now I am an incredibly experienced fabricator with both metal and composites. I have built several high end off road race cars and prerunners (Baja 1000 stuff) along with countless carbon, kevlar, and fiberglass structures, car bodies, instrument panels, etc and I am definitely what you would call sufficient with a MIG gun or TIG torch on everything except Titanium. The only difference with all this being that everything I have worked on up until now has been a vehicle that was designed to roll multiple times at three digit speeds in the dirt, flip back over, and drive off providing the suspension (especially the spindles and steering) stayed together. Not exactly what a tube fuselage was meant to do! So here's my problem: The guy that I bought this from REALLY liked using a grinding wheel after he gas welded whatever he was welding. Every weld, minus the lower wing mounts, he did was ground down. Not only that but instead of using a plastic or scotch bright abrasive wheel on a die grinder to clean off the primer before he welded, he would use a grinding wheel. This has me REALLY concerned as he has ground into some pretty critical areas creating shear and cracking points. These areas are the upper longeron where the canopy flange is, The upper longeron where there is a gusset for the stab tube, and the upper longeron and cross tube where there is a gusset for the seat back. I bought this thing for the reason that I WOULDN'T have to spend 6 months building a fuselage but I am definitely not going to fly this fuselage the way it is. So this doesn't leave me with many options. I think these options are: Figure out a way to fix it, cut out the upper longeron (freaking nightmare), or scrap the whole fuselage and spend 6 months building a new one. My idea for fixing it would be fairly easy in that I would take a 3/4" .035 tube, cut in in half down the middle, sandwich the affected tubes, and weld them up. While this idea would work, it would still create stress points at the ends of the tube patches. I could also just make oversized and thicker gussets and weld them over the affected areas as the areas with this problem all require gussets anyways. Either way, I'm adding weight although a minimal amount. So what do you guys think? Thanks in advance!
Also, If there is anyone here in the SoCal area I'd love to meet up. I'm in South Orange County. I definitely wouldn't mind having someone look at it
Edited by: flyerrider
