Had a hard landing today with my sig ep42. Plane is undamaged except for knocking the landing gear off. The airplane is very lightly built and didnt even have blocks in there to screw the gear into. It just had a slightly thicker balsa piece that tore out cleanly. Easy fix. But I cant decide whether wood glue or epoxy would be better and whether I should try to reinforce the area with blocks. Its an electric and needs to stay light. I am an medium level beginner and expect a hard landing from time to time. So some give would be good.

What the best way to repair?

Bryris, I would use epoxy. It will hold better than the would glue. With it being electric you can replace the would with the same type or slightly stronger/thicker (but you would have to decide that depending on how powerful your setup is) and even use CA. However, I personally would use the 30 minute epoxy to hold better. Hope this helps. good luck.

Joe

The EP-42 is large enough at 330sq inches, it won't be affected much by small fractions of an ounce in weight. Epoxy, traditional wood glues(aliphatic/elmers), Gorilla(polyurethane), or CA could all be used here with little impact as long as you're not globbing it around by the tablespoon full. It might be worth spending a fraction of an ounce on beefing up the area with a couple of Popsicle sticks.

triangle stock on the inside fuse corners does a lot of good with minimal weight. I would go about an inch front and rear of the LG plate.

Tom

In my opinion, there are three places on a plane that epoxy is absolutey mandatory. First is the firewall, second the landing gear plate and whatever reinforcements used for them, and tail feathers. What is used on the rest of the plane is pretty much just a personal preference, but those three places really need epoxy. A fourth would be joining wing halves and applying fiberglass tape around that joint, but other kinds of adhesive COULD be used here. I still use 30 minute epoxy. Just my opinion.

I agree with the others. Epoxy is what you need to do your repairs with in the landing gear area. It will give you the strength you need to keep the landing gear secure.

Ken

You need to pick your battles regarding weight. Some areas are not worth skimping on as you found out. Generally for "most" builders the repair will weigh more than if it was done properly during construction. With arfs your usually stuck but you can do things like adding tri-stock, etc to that area..

Ended up fabbing a new gear plank from some spare ply I had, doubled it up, and used 30 min epoxy to put it into place. Put epoxy on what remained of the triangle stock that was in there and put epoxy around the seams once put into place and used a heat gun to thin the epoxy to soak into the seam gaps pretty well. Hopefully it'll hold.