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Old 10-23-2002, 05:09 PM
  #22  
Montague
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Join Date: Apr 2002
Location: Laurel, MD,
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Default Give me some numbers please.

1) Nothing. I haven't totaled out anything this year.

2) 64 rounds of combat.

3) hard to tell.

Ok, now for the rest of the story. I've taken my share of hard hits, and broken my share of stuff, but since I don't have a ton of cash, I repair rather than replace if at all possible. I am running about 1 mid-air every 3 or 4 rounds, about half of them are of the "Oooh that hurt" variety.

I've had to make all kinds of repairs, including totally stripping 3 wings, gluing the foam back together with probond and re-covering. One older Skull Bandit wing had a the leading edge broken in 3 or 4 places, TE broken in 4 or 5, foam cut all the way though by a prop in one place, broken from TE to spar in another, and the fiberglass spars loose in the groove for about 1/3 the span. Spliced in new wood, put probond in cuts, cut out crushed foam and spliced in scrap then sanded smooth, then re-ripstopped. Took a while, but the wing is still active as my #3 B class wing.

I also had an A class stock Battle Floyd basically get cut in half. Some probond, CA, and packing tape, and it's back to active status.

Right now, two of my A class wings have broken balsa wood spars (what was I thinking?). I have a contest this weekend. I'll be splicing in some new spar material and/or carbon fiber and slapping on some tape.

If I'd had the time or money to total out stuff what was really broken, I'd have to guess that I'd be at between 7 and 9 wings and 3 fuses.

I now have the parts for a foam cutter. Once I get that worked out, I'll be building more wings faster and cheaper, and expect to toss more in the garbage, including most of my current wings.

Oh, another guy around here had a blue foam and wood wing get cut clean in half. He flew the same wing the next contest, and got it cut in half again, at a different point on the wing. He repaired it again, and I expect to see it this weekend too. Foam repaired with probond is pretty strong, and not that heavy if you do it carefully.