Bungee Truss

[Av8r3400]

This past Airventure, I got two things: A little piece of wall candy and a bent bungee truss (due to a plop landing on the UL Field).

Here's a few photos of the repair.

First, a couple of shots of the truss damage:

[Av8r3400]

Cutting out the damage:

[Av8r3400]

Welding in the new material. Angle cuts, sleeves on the inside of the replacement tubes and rosette welds to hold the sleeves per FAR requirements.

[Av8r3400]

Here's the finished repair. Thanks goes to a good friend named Dave Meyer, who is currently building an Avid/Kitfox hybrid. He is a fabricator/welder extraordinaire. Without his help, this project would still be on-going.

[Av8r3400]

The bungee gear was never my favorite. I don't care for design of the truss or the working of the gear (much less the Matco brakes on them ).

So I took the Grove gear (with wheels, brakes and 600-6 tires) from my project plane and installed them on my flyer. This photo is of the plane on the scales, for a new weight and balance. For the record, net weight gain was 8 (yes, eight) pounds. Old 631, new 639 empty weight.

The second photo is for everyone who has ever wondered what a retractable Kitfox would look like....

[kitfoxnick]

Nice work I did the same thing last fall, when I hit a big hole off airport. Was the damage from the limit cable?

[Av8r3400]

I think it's a cumulative effect. One hard landing and the cable puts a dent in one of the tubes. The next one the dent grows as the tube gets weaker. Next you know the bungees are tight enough to continue the process and finally crunch, truss collapse.

The "plop" landing that bent my truss was not even very hard and it was on soft turf.

[sdemeyer]

I did the same thing last year! Then I got rid of the bungee cord gear and installed good bush gear. The safety cable is very strong

[HighWing]

A real nice and quite challengint repair. It looks like it was done without removing the fabric. C5's observation is pretty much mine as well regarding the limit cables. They pretty much exist to prevent a prop strike and even with the collapsed truss, I don't recall ever hearing of a prop strike on a hard landing, but lots of truss issues over the years.
Lowell

[Model 2 Madness]

Well, at least I know I am not the only one to encounter this!!

Here is my Model II going through repairs....

The plane was built in '92 and luckily the same Polytone paint (Intl Orange) matched perfectly!