ORIGINAL: vagent
I folded my Avistar wing (after months of flying with no apparent problems). Wing broke cleanly in the middle. My construction joint did not break--one of the end panels assembled by the manufacturer separated. And of course the wing joiner broke.
Question is, when I rebuild do I need the wing joiner? It is impossible to remove the original one that broke. My plan is to clean up the area where the wing broke, epoxy it, then fiberglass it--about 4 inches--enough to have the glass ride on the wing saddle of the fuse. If I do this, can I ignore the "wing joiner"? And, as someone has already asked will Monokote go back down on the glass? (I've already peeled it back to apply the glass).
Thanks
I did the same with my Superstar when the firewall left the plane in mid air and it ended up in a tree. I glued the wing back together and glassed the center section. It looked like a lot of work to try and repair the joiner, so I didn't. I used a single layer of 2 ounce/yard fabric (it might have been 3/4 oz.) and glassed the entire sheeted center section. That was 28 hard flights ago and it seems to be holding up fine. Takes some extra heat to get the Monokote to stick to the glass.
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I used one piece of fabric for the top and one on the bottom. They overlapped below the leading edge and on the trailing edge. The increase in thickness was very small and I have no problem with the wing fitting the saddle. A 2 oz fabric has a thickness of 0.004 inches. The fabric I used was a boat and tooling fabric from
http://www.fiberglast.com and I used a Sig® Polyester Glass Resin
Dave