Repairing Sailplane Tailboom
I broke the tailboom on my Filip sailplane completely in half during a landing at Parker Mountain. The tailboom was previously weakened by a nasty crash at Point Fermin in San Pedro. I fixed it by jigging the two halves of the fuselage and patching the crack with layers of fiberglass.
Filip in the repair shop.
The forward end of the fuselage was jigged with masking tape and a couple of TV news camera batteries (don't ask). The angle of the fuselage was adjusted by moving the triangular ruler back and forth.
TV news camera batteries sure are handy.
The aft part of the tailboom sat on a Futaba servo and was secured with masking tape. I lined it up with the forward fuse by moving the pin box with balsa scraps. Then I eyeballed the whole thing at different angles and made adjustments until everything looked straight.
Futaba servos are nice too.
Leveling the wing seat with a torpedo level.
To patch the crack I used four layers of 2 oz. fiberglass with West Systems epoxy. There's a bulge at the split because the layers go from 1" wide to 4" wide and because I couldn't get rid of an air pocket between the first couple of layers.
Fiberglass patch.
After a couple of coats of paint, the Filip was re-balanced on my ultra high-tech epoxy bottle CG balancer. I also built a new, stronger v-tail.
Good as new and ready for more crashing.
posted by Tim at 9:30 PM
