Dr Scoles,

Since you are "gonna be rough on this plane", I would certainly agree you're doing the right thing and questioning the strength of the wings (regardless of the manufacturer).

Unfortunately, even having an experienced builder examine the wings may not be enough. The wings are sealed up on many ARFs and while you can make some cutouts in the root chord and examine the inside with a bore scope, due to internal structure you may only have a partial view of the interior of the wing. Additionally, much of the strength of glue joints comes from proper preparation of the surfaces to be bonded and you'll likely never know if the prep work was done. If your builder finds an issue deep in the wing, you then have the problem of how to fix it and that might not be possible due to lack of access.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of an instance where someone had a wing fail at mid-span. There have been cases where the wings "clapped" either due to failure of the main spar or of the fuselage formers supporting plug-in spars. Wing alignment tabs have broken, leading edges have opened up, control surfaces have fluttered leading to a variety of failures, H-stabs have come off, etc. If you're going to be tough on the plane, then you really should look at everything not just the wings.

I see that you live in the northwest and I suppose your flying season will be over in the approx 12 weeks that it takes to receive a jet (unless it's in stock). Assuming that you have the time, you might want to get in a dialogue with the manufacturer, Skymaster, as Anton and John frequent this forum, not to mention BVM reps. They should be able to furnish photos of a model in production showing the wings, stab, fins, stab during layup where one skin and the internal structure is shown (but before the unit is sealed up by the addition of the other skin). Additionally, at least one manufacturer offers a "heavy duty" version of several of their planes in which additional layers of carbon fibre are applied.

Thanks for your concerns about safety. Good luck,

Jim