I'm a lucky guy. Yesterday I was just bolting in the seat belts as one of the last to-do's to get ready for the airworthiness inspection on my model III. I had just moved one of the flaperon control horns to get access to an attach point and noticed the stick wasn't moving with the flaperon any longer. After investigating, I found the threaded portion of the FRE-49 male rod end had snapped in the flaperon control linkage. I'd hate to think of what would have resulted if I had been flying at the time.
I recently went through all the control linkages and didn't detect any issues. Has anybody else had issues with weakness in this component, or conditions that would stress it unduly?
Broken Flaperon Control Link
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