Well, the Sedbergh project is still going strong, with work slowing down a bit with the usual amount of other commitments in the workshop during winter.
One of these ‘other commitments’ is a Slingsby Prefect that has been brought in for its annual. The annual turned out to be a fair load of work. First of all there was the vertical tail. It is not by all means a big vertical tail on this aircraft, but it seems to be very useful for flying, so we are somewhat attached to it. Unfortunately, the fuselage turned out to no longer be attached to it properly. What started out as a minor crack, turned out to be Pandora’s box.
This is what we started with.
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And then we discovered that Rib 1’s gluejoint to the top fuselage ply had partially failed. This is what helps hold the tail to the rest of the aircraft. So we opened a little inspection hole.
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We then noticed that the D-nose longeron had disbonded from its position on the fuselage cross rib. So it too had to come out.
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And then we took off the top of the fuselage skin to have proper access. By now very little of actual tail section was left. But we finally had a basis to work with.
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After a bit of work the top fuselage skin was in again, and the framework of the vertical stabilizer started to resemble, well, a vertical stabilizer again.
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So we decided we might as well put some new skin on it. Note that this picture is not 24 hours after the first in this post…
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Shortly after that we started off with the wing inspection. And then stopped and drank beer, because we found a large mouse nest, which has done some damage to the interspar area near the wing strut attachment – of course the most complex wing bit to repair. Still working on a solution, but I am confident it’ll buff out with some days/weeks of work…
PS: the tail damage turned out to be because the rudder cable stops had not been refitted after its last overhaul in 1988 by a previous owner, leading to overstress damage of the tail. If you have a Prefect: check if these are fitted. It’ll save you a lot of work!
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