Stormbird by Aeroteam & Doc Hammond

[Peter Garsden]

In the previous accident the outer nose cone had cracked. I repaired it with cryano and filler but it didn't hold so this time I have overlaid it with 25gram cloth, which still may not be strong enough. We will see.

[Peter Garsden]

It is now 18 months since my last post. I had several great flights with the Stormbird, which eventually had another mishap when one of the flap wipers jammed down upon an aborted landing up Mam Tor. With hindsight I should just have forced it down, but it simply spiral dived into the ground half way down a cliff. Amazingly there was a paraglider who had also been a sheep farmer in New Zealand on hand who volunteered to shin down the cliff and retrieve it. It had cart wheeled badly, broken the right wing box, the fuselage had snapped at the same point as above, and I was annoyed.

I took the plane home, and set about making a better job of repairing the fuselage with 150 gram Kevlar cloth, and removed the ballast tube. There is enough ballast in the wing with brass dowels anyway and I never used the fuselage ballast in any event. It is now secure enough and probably stronger than the original.

The wing was a bigger problem. I avoided cutting holes underneath, and tried to glue it. Despite best efforts it kept breaking again.

I ordered a new wing last summer but it has never arrived so I set about cutting hatches under the wing to gain proper access to the inside. I noticed that the join between the wing joiner box and the fuselage was a bit lacking which was where the crack had extended for about 4 inches.

1. I cut two hatches to repair properly the leading edge and wing box. The ballast tube had broken away.
2. I glued with as much milled fibreglass/epoxy as I could the cracks and clamped them shut.
3. I dremmelled out as much old epoxy as I could from the joins.
4. I made up a leading edge clamping tool with 1/2 inch balsa, 1/32 ply face and 80 grit paper to keep it in position on clamping shut.
5. I made fences for the ballast tube and added some 80 gram kevlar reinforcement to the corner join as belt and braces.
6. I used about 3 syringes to squirt in a mixture of epoxy and milled fibreglass, then finishing resin and Microballoons.
7. I filled either side of the ballast tube, which had actually broken and had to be carefully pieced together.
8. I will be making supports out of 1/32 ply to hold the hatches I cut for gluing back into place. If it breaks again, I can always cut the hatches free. I could diamond tape them into position but hopefully this wing will be now be sound and not need attention again.
9. I will then fill, make good and spray a finish of both black and white. Fortunately, Halfords standard white and black are a good match.

The only way to properly repair the break between the two skins at the root is to open up the wing with this hatch underneath the wing so it is not seen.

in the above photo you can see one of the clamping template I made for the leading edge with ply on the face towards the camera and grit paper underneath to stop the clamps slipping off the curved surface. Here it is being used to provide a face for the resin which I syringed in as the carbon box facing had broken away.

You can also see the extra fence I put into position.

Syringes can be bought on bulk on EBay and are best thrown away as they cannot really be cleaned.

Here is the Kevlar before wetting out.