Sunday, June 22, 2014

Repair of Alpha 450 Broken Wing

As all of us have done, Aidan aborted a takeoff by crashing into a safety fence, putting a pretty nice dent in the leading edge of the Alpha Sport 450. We used some "field cote" (packing tape) to patch the leading edge and kept on flying. Today I took on the repair.



Bent leading edge, wrinkled cote.






Worse under the cote.




Pulled the wood up and CA'd it, then sanded it as smooth as I could. A lot of CA inside.



Spackled the uneven surfaces. Modeling filler is better, but alas, I have none.








I put a piece of packing tape across the repair, then cote over it. I don't have any red or blue cote... used white.  One piece top to the middle of the leading edge, one overlapping, and a third overlapping underneath.






Not my best work, but it came out pretty darn good!



We field named her Jinx, since it really is always something!



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