At our field we have corn growing this year on 3 sides of the runway, thankfully. I was trying some inverted flight with my 4*40 and dumb thumbed it into the ground. Minor damage because the corn saved it. The landing gear ripped off but thankfully I had thought to put in nylon screws so no damage there. Only damage to the fuse is the former right behind the gas tank had a few pieces come off but i can just glue those back. This wing has about 3 places where the leading edge was cracked. What would you guys suggest for repairing these spots? Just glue the pieces back?? CA or epoxy?

I like hay myself - it is a lot softer than corn. Those stalks can get pretty tough.

Do you have any pictures of the wing damage? You might be able to get away with gluing the cracks, but I would verify that there is no more damage beyond the cracks in the LE first. I think the glue choice is partially dependant on the size of the cracks. I prefer epoxy whenever possible - if weight is not an issue.
Steve

If you can pinch the cracks together, fill them with medium CA then squeeze them together, wipe off the excess immediantly. If it were me, I would strip the monocoat off the wing and check for hidden damage. If the plane is an ARF, I would take advantage of the situation and check out the whole plane before re-covering. I have built several kits using different consisties of CA but I always use epoxy for the firewall and to fuel proof inside the engine compartment. CA on balsa doesnt sand well at all so be careful there. As far as the landing gear goes, I changed the wire on my Aerostar to aluminum and installed hardwood rails in the fuse. I attached the gear with S.S. bolts. Even after some real hard landings, I havent damaged the fuse, I have bent the gear. When you re-cover the wing, put about 2 degrees of wash-out in the wing. This will help keep the plane from dropping a wing (tip stalling) on a slow landing.

Agree with Steve and Skeletor, although the damage may look slight, there could be some interior damage you can't see, commonly refered to as "transmission of shock". A safe bet is to either completely strip the wing and check out the ribs, or cut the monocoat off around the damage and inspect. If you choose the later though you'll have a wing with patch work covering. If you end up having to do a lot of repair, don't forget to check the balancing of your wing before covering.

Good luck,
Chris.

Enjoy the corn now because when you put one 100 feet in when it's 8 foot tall you'll be hating life!

Then, when they cut it it will be like 1000's of little spikes that like to impale airplanes!

The corn has saved me more than hurt me though.

Oh the corn is about 8 feet now and it was probably more like 200 feet from the runway. Thankfully the plane is bright yellow so it makes it easy to find....It's not an ARF. I built her up. I'll probably take all the covering off the wings. It'll give me a chance to put the design on it i origionally wanted to.

at my field is a hay growing field. the tall grass is great for deadsticks and the such. only problem is middle of the summer when the grass gets very high, might be hard to find a downed airplane.

sean

You guys must have different corn than we do in St. Louis. The corn here is refered to as hell...[:'(] Its hot, humid, planted so close together that you cant hardly walk. the leaves try to cut you and you can only see about 10 feet down the rows. I'll be glad next year when we get beans again

Saved by the corn, Just had to look at this. Gotta go with hogbilly on this one up here in n.w. ohio if the corn gets ya 90% of the time ya got two choice's. Lots of nasty looking pieces or ya won't see it again till harvest. I do have to admit that I put one down in the corn once with no damage what so ever. Just had to mark the spot, and go get someone taller than me who could come close to reaching it so they could catch it while I bent the stalks over. Check real good for hidden damage and stay away from the corn.

Clear skies to ya all


Egor

At least with corn you have a chance of finding it, unlike a forest of trees!

Chris.

Hey csdawggie (Chris), I hate to hear about the 4* getting into a fight with the turf. CA should work fine for it and it should be good as new. I still have to plane a trip up there so we can fly again. Make a good day out of it.

Give me a call and we can work something out about the wing. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Sounds like a good place to have a long-sleeved shirt and a GPS handy...

Lachlan

Corn and 4* don't like each other.

I had run out of fuel at very low altitude about the center of the runway and decided to land instead of turning arround at 4-5ft height was not option.
So the short o the story the corn stoped the planes beatiful but fast deadstick landing roll. The LE was broken at 3 points and I just glued it back the same pieces. As the LE is not sheeted it breaks very easy and also easy to repair.

I put small scraps of wood at the joints as one of the breaks was at the same point as an earlier corn 4* meeting.

But at 1 time I had a dead stick and was short of the runway and landed in corn, to my suprise the plane was hanging through the corn and did not even reach the ground and no damage on the plane.

This year we have the corn on the end of the runway for our wind and fly pattern. And at 3-4ft now I can see corn reacinh and pulling down planes

But corn is better than soya beans, soya beans tend to puncture lots of holes in the covering. At our field we have the choice of fixing holes in covering or some wood big covering patches. One side is corn the other is soya bean

I put my superstar 40 in the corn on its second flight. Deadstick with too much altitude above me. No damage to the plane, but it was a pain to get it out. I do like hay better. A diferent time, I took off for one last flight. It was getting dark, but I thought I could get a few more minutes flight time. Just my luck, the throttle stuck wide open. I would have been happy to just wait for it to run out of fuel, but it was getting hard to see. So I just made a low pass over the hay as level as I could until the wheels touched the top of the hay. It was upside down when I got to it, but otherwise unharmed.