First crash

[Petepit]

I have join the club my first crash. I thought it would always be a landing but it was on take off. My trainers wing is in two and fuse has one side missing and the bottom ripped out. Engine ok. Wind had changed direction so I changed take off direction full power and to hard on the rudder to keep it straight and pull on elevator to early. She went straight up and stall and spirral to the ground hitting the pit fence which did all the damage.
Fixable but when she hit it moved the fuel tank back pulling the fuel line off and soaked all inside the fuse. Can I use glue on fuel soaked balsa? And when do u just put it in the to hard basket and go out buy a new ARF kit? Or is that being to lazy?

[abenn]

For me, it only goes in the bin when it gets too heavy to fly because of all the glue. That's what happened to my first trainer.

Fuel can make the repair more difficult, and you're probably going to have to remove most of the covering to make a good job of it. To get rid of the fuel you can use kitchen towels (and a bit of heat) or talcum powder to soak it up, and you can even wash it in warm water with detergent (take the radio and servos out first!). Then you should find that thin cyano glue will adhere satisfactorily.

So far as your wing is concerned, no fuel problems there presumably. What kind of wing is it? If it's a foam wing with wood sheeting you can probably join the halves with a fibreglass bandage. If it's a built-up balsa/ply wing you're probably going to have to make some new pieces to join and/or reinforce the centre. In either case, remove the broken bits first if you can so that you're replacing them, rather than adding to them. Epoxy will be the best glue there.

While you're at it, check all other joints and dribble in some thin cyano just to make sure.

Can you post a pic if you need more specific help?

[clipclop]

Heres a wing under repair (its my sons trainer) , it was damaged in an incident exactly like yours.
You can see how the top spar is prepaired for a new section to be glued in , the bottom spar was repaired the same. Leading edge was repaired with cyno and a backing of ply to reinforce.
The sheeting was repaired by glueing a backing strip of balsa under the remaining sheeting with this extending into the cutout. The new leading edge sheeting is then cut to butt into place and glued to the backing strips , leading edge and spar.
The repaired spars were reinforced by glueing verticle webs out beyond the repaired section .
This repair method will be as strong /stronger than original , he has since hooked the landing gear on the top wire of a fence dueing a dead stick approach , this resulted in the model cartwheeling into the deck . only damage was a brocken fin -quick cyno repair .
I may add this wing was previously repaired along with a new fuselarge build after a radio failue.
The original model was a V-Mar Challenger, I rebuilt the fuselarge by copying the rough dimentions and useing all the old fittings , tail components. Only took a day, and was way cheaper than a new ARF.
Stewart
Oh make sure the wing is firmly held flat whilst glueing back together

[clipclop]

Heres the repaired trainer , also my Simplex diesel powered and my youngest sons Cox .049 power

[Keith43221]

looking good! hope you better luck next time!

[clipclop]

Keith,
Those are old (2000) pictures , I posted them to show Petepit how repairs can be done. My son has past the crash and burn state and can now fly quite well , his current favourite model is a radio control combat wing- built like a 70's balsa control line combat model, its fitted with a Magnum XL15 and tops out at around 180kph and is very sensitive to controls, 6mm total elevator travel!! , at44" span and only 21oz flying weight it just flys out of your hands.
I must add its way to fast and agile for me, my eyes are just to tired to keep up
Stewart