When Bad Things Happen to Good Planes

Kim wrote:Well it HAD to happen sooner or later; the 3 Meter Bird of Time finally found it'self out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas over, of all things, a field of corn-stalk stubble!

We were flying the 9 foot glider out of Uncle Wayne's backyard aerodrome in beautiful downtown Boaz, Illinois...on a photo mission to get images of his recently completed house: 'Pappy's Pad'.

The first flight went OK, with the GoPro equipped B.O.T. flirting dangerously with the FAA's 400 foot agl alttitude retriction as it circled high over Pappy's Pad.  After the Cox Medallion .15 sipped the last of it's fuel, we got a good, long thermaling flight before sliding back for a touch down next to 'The Bob Tree'.  

On the next run though, sliding in dead-stick as always, I pulled one-too-many altitude-burning  'S' turns, followed by a hard pull (yeah, I DON'T know why!).  The resulting tip-stall snapped the big sailplane in exactly the wrong direction...heading it back out over the stubble.

Dropped the nose and jabbed in some rudder in the recovering turn, hoping to pull out just above the evil, plane-crunching monoliths, and coast back home in ground effect.  Nope, the left wing-tip caught a stalk and, in cool pilot-speak, 'the surface departed the airframe'.  

That was the whole of the damage though, and the 3 Meter B.O.T. is no stranger to catching  crap from fences and gates and such.  So, a rebuild of the left spar box will see the battered old buzzard once again rising through the ether.

And yes, we got some fair-to-workable images, but still want to do it again with better light.

Marleysky wrote:Ah, Kim - you give me hope for my crunched and crumpled Sig Sr. I acquired at a garage sale some time back. It just has not gotten it's turn on the repair bench. Missing the main ingredient of "time"  haha. Once again,  living vicariously thru other peoples adventures  Thanks for the pictures and story.