Original Posted By: Michael Perez
Nearly a year ago, in April, my Piet was severely damaged during a landing. Oneof the wood gear members gave out, which caused a collapse of the gear, causingthe fuselage to drop onto the solid axle thusly breaking the bottom longerons(and a little of the side skins). Also, three of the four wing struts cameinto contact with the wheels, and bent them.Also suffered a prop strike.I was fortunate no one was hurt (was alone), and it was in my back yard.It was almost exactly 4 months until the airplane was airworthy again. Of those4 months, there were probably 3 1/2 weeks worth of work days put into the plane.This included extensive dismantling so that I could store as much as possible,close to my shop. The wing had to get transported (didn't have my wingtrailer then) to a friend's shop, where it got stored until ready to go backtogether. Was another fiasco getting it back to the property and onto the plane,learned a lot!The prop was damaged but the engine was not (me and friend took it apart, had allthe parts inspected, put it all back together...). Other than that, 3 of the4 wing struts were damaged. 3 of the 4 gear members were damaged. Two longerons,two side skins, belly skin and a crossmember. Nine pieces of wood, threepieces of metal.Repairs to the fuselage took 3 days. Not very amazing. When I started repairson the fuse, it was a hundred or so pound structure. Nothing but wood, fabric,tailwheel and some fittings. I could lift it and turn it over by myself, itwas THAT dismantled (so it would fit where my woodworking stuff is). When I was done, it was the same 100 pound (or so) structure, but without brokenwood or torn fabric anywhere. I had to replace sections on 4 pieces of theoriginal fuse (longerons and side skins), and make and install a new crossmemberand belly skin. That's it. I purposely staged in a way that actual repairswould go quickly so that it wasn't apart long. Both for memory sake and becausewood tends to do some moving on it's own. Since three of the gear legs were destroyed (I had replaced one already, it survived),I just made an all new set. I had patterns... At that point, putting it all back together was akin to all y'alls (who've builtor restored one) final assembly. Incredibly tedious and time consuming.But the repairs to the fuse were not. Very straight forward and akin to installinga door on a previously completed and covered fuse I imagine, which is whyI referred to it. I never even came close to claiming I took an airplane restingon an axle in a field back to airworthy in three days. I repaired the damagein three. Incredible cynicism makes it tough to determine if it was just not very obvious(I didn't tell EVERYTHING because it wasn't germain to installing a door), orjust plain rudeness that elevated a simple description of repairs to a fuselageinto grand claims of restoration abilities. One would think the former wouldresult in a simple question... The repairs came out really really well, I was extremely happy with them and theirperformance. The repaired fabric, not so much... I'm happy to practice thatsort of thing now. Safe and completely functional, but I've got some workto do there.I really wanted to document it all really well, but my camera was broke, don'town a smart phone and I was in a hurry. And now you have, ala Paul Harvey, the rest of the story...Read this topic online here:
http://forums.matronics.com/viewtopic.p ... ______Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 09:56:20 -0700 (PDT)