Hey miniCap,

Awesome job. You have done a very nice job of cleaning it up and getting it back together. Hang in there and it will soon be as good as new! If your experience was the same as mine you start with great trepidation (and a view that it still may be a basket job!) but clean it up slowly, begin to tack it together bit by bit, and after an hour or so it begins to look like a plane -- and soon you wonder why you almost thought about not repairing it!!

On the Hydeaway, I didn't put cloth on the outside. Once I had the cloth on the inside I dug around with the tip of a knife on the outside to remove any loose (or potentially loose) chips in the original gel coat, and gouged out a few of the hairline cracks I had (on the nose impact there were quite a few of those). Then I filled it with laminating epoxy and micro-balloons -- and taped some heavier plastic document folders over it to force it into a reasonably smooth layer. I figured that would get into the gaps/holes and didn't leave me with the problem of having to sand down a outer cloth layer. The sanding on the sides of the fuse where yours broke will be a little harder to get smooth without sanding through the gel coat in place -- unfortunately only a big sanding block, a mix of 120 to 240 papers, and much patience will get you through that!!

And then I tested the repair. Crash 1 was radio going into failsafe on downwind for landing and it cruised into the ground on low throttle doing the damage you see in the three shots of the nose repair! 25 flights after I repaired it it had a mid air at a comp. that ripped off the right wing and sent it spiralling into a (dry) swamp. This time it broke right through the wing tube area -- but the nose I had prevoiusly repaired came out almost in tact!! (and this is the repair I was doing in the fuse jig photo above).

Keep up the good work!

David