Sometimes determination to get a plane flying can be the worst enemy we face. We forget to check the basics and miss something critical. It happens to the best of us. Case in point - last Sunday I went to the field expecting to spend 2-3 hours with my friends flying my current favorite plane (only because my last favorite expired on July 4). I did my usual preflight, took off, and halfway around the first circuit, the engine dead-sticked! There was a pretty stiff wind, and the plane was flying downwind, but I had plenty of altitude, so I brought it around and was on the normal approach, but a bit slow. The plane landed hard and flipped over.

When I got it back to the pit area, I inspected it thoroughly and found the reason for the deadstick - My throttle linkage had disconnected from the carb, and luckily the fuel line passing through that area had pushed the throttle closed. I had also cracked the reinforcement on the fire wall.

So I used some thin CA to repair the cracks, reconnected the throttle linkage, and back in the air. At this point, foul weather looked to be moving in, so I did a few practice landings. Finally I was setting up for my final landing and realized I had no throttle response, only it was stuck at about 3/4 throttle! Far to fast to land, so I had to fly for another 10 minutes waiting for the plane to run out of fuel. After safely landing on another deadstick, I realized that my bell crank had come loose from its mounting.

The point of the story is that I should have looked at the bell crank during the pre-flight (yes its visible), and I should have caught it during the repair of the linkage the first time. I didn't, and it put my plane at risk.

As for the covering, its interesting that the covering came loose during a "low and slow" pass. Normally, the stresses on the covering are pretty low during that kind of flight. As for the cut, it could have happened during transport or storage. "Hanger rash" is fairly common. Look at your car and your storage area for anything that might have come in contact with the wing that might have scratched or cut the covering.

Brad