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Old 06-06-2005 | 07:11 PM
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Bladeflyer
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From: Stone Mountain, GA
Default Icepoint Wing Failure

This is urgent message for those of you with the new Icepoint with the one piece wing. I watched the wing come apart at the Andersonville pattern contest. The pilot was in Advanced class doing a 45 degree downline with a negative snap in the middle. Downline was established then came the snap. The wing exploded! It broke right at the joint where the 2 halves were put together. INspection at the crash site the break was very clean, I mean scary clean. The glass cloth used was the thinnest that you can find and not wrapped that wide. The spar structure is all balsa with no ply visible and there was not evidence on any glue at all in the spar joiner box where one would think that a ply spar should have been epoxied into.
For those that have the Icepoint do yourself a favor and take a close look at the middle of your wing. The balsa sheeting is very thin and like I said the glass cloth is very thin and there is only one layer of it. Very easy to seperate the balsa sheeting.
The was another pilot there with a Icepoint who was very interested to see the make up of the wing and was to make immediate repairs to his bird.

The snap was no more violent than any other snap and there was not a lot of speed build up prior to the failure. Luckily all the debree came down within 20 feet and the portion of the wing that failed was very evident.

There were several witnesses to this crash so it was not pilot error putting too much stress on the plane.

Check your wings.