Superstar 40 help?
 

I just got a monokote arf superstar 40 for my girl friend to teach her to fly and i have a build question.

Last night i was joining the wing halves and gluing the angled wood connector into the wings and had a problem. as i glued one half in and then tried to glue the other, the wings would not fit together and there ended up being a 1/2 inch gap between the 2 wings. I should have test fit it but, in my hurry to build, i did not and the joiner was too long. Of course by this time, the glue had set and i could not pull it back apart and modify. So, i just reached in and cut the joiner.

So, i now have a superstar 40 wing that has no way of joining. The "stock" joiner is now firmly glued into the joiner holes on both wings and i know that if i just epoxy the wing faces together, it will come apart on the first flight.

Is there a easy solution to this? or am i going to have to re engineer a wing joiner?

RE: Superstar 40 help?
 

WOW, I would have probably filled the gap with balsa.
But it's cut now. If you could reengineer a diahdral brace that would be nice.
Or you could butt glue it together peel back the Monokote and wrap it with about six inches of heavy fiberglass and epoxy. then put the Monokote back over. it will look kind of like c**p though.

RE: Superstar 40 help?
 

If the dihedral brace is flat against shear webbing giving a fair amount of wood to drill into, you might be able to drill 2 holes (one near the top and one near the bottom) and insert a couple dowels to use as wing joiners. If you can get em to fit together with some wood holding them, all you'd need is a thin strip of fiberglass down the middle to reinforce it. Of course, getting the angle right on those holes on both wings wouldn't be easy... And no matter how you do it you're going to be stripping some covering to apply glass.

Hobbico and the tower conglomerate seem to be pretty understanding people too. You might want to call and see if they'll give you a break on some replacement wings. If nothing else, they might be able to suggest a better fix.

RE: Superstar 40 help?
 

In this case I have seen people remove some of the covering at the center of the wing and fiberglass the joint with fiberglass cloth and epoxy then recover over the fiberglass

RE: Superstar 40 help?
 

Thanks for the advice guys, i called hobbico and they are sending out a complete new wing set with joiner at no charge! Now thats what i call customer service!!!!

The tech also stated that there have been numerous problems with the joiner needing to be sanded before the install.

RE: Superstar 40 help?
 

Wow! That is mighty nice of Hobbico. I wouldn't toss the current wing. See if you can fix it, and have it as a back up. Post a picture of it, if you can.

RE: Superstar 40 help?
 

Hate that quick drying glue.
I don't know how adapt you are at woodworking, but you can drill out the old joiner and replace it with a "hard wood" dowel or maybe two one on top of each other. Then epoxy the halves together again.