Stuart Posted July 22, 2013 Report Share Posted July 22, 2013 Our club's 2008 CTLS gets a lot of use from 16 pilots. A few of those pilots are in training and can get a little hard on the airplane. We're seeing minor cracks on the landing gear strut fairings that we've covered with some white tape. We'll eventually replace the fairings but not now while some pilots are still learning to land. Unfortunately, last week one of our students was doing touch and goes with an instructor and on one take off over-rotated and struck the tail on the pavement. It must have buckled the side of the ventral fin because a line of gel coat about 3/8" wide and 6" long cracked off. We removed the fin for inspection and fortunately there was no structural damage to the underlying fiber. Just the missing gel coat. While inspecting we did find a couple of small cracks around a few of the screw holes toward the front of the fin. We're about to ground the plane for annual so I'm looking into how to fix both the gel coat and the cracks around the holes. Is this something a fiberglass repair shop can do? Stuart Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Lee Posted July 23, 2013 Report Share Posted July 23, 2013 Hi Stuart, Since we are only talking about a couple of tiny cracks you could fiber glass those. Dont get carried away with the fiber glass and eapecially the resin. Any paint shop can sand, repair and paint the bad spot on the gel coat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.