It appears that balsa planes are getting more of a cult following here on the FT Forum, with multiple people taking on their first balsa builds, and I'm thrilled to see that! Building a plane that actually flies from a box of sticks and planks is a great feeling of accomplishment.
However, some people (like me) also find a lot of satisfaction in re-building (rescuing) planes. There are tons of cheap planes out there at swap meets, on Craigslist, from friends, etc that would be flyable with a bit of work. Since flying season is well underway and I've got plenty of flyable planes to keep me busy I decided to do a quick-ish thread on repairing a balsa wing.
Enter the Funtana S90 I picked up a couple years ago. It's had a hard life and needs a lot of TLC to get it air-worthy again. The fuselage will require a ton of work and will have to wait, but for now the right wing will be used to show how I go about fixing a plane. I picked this wing because it has a lot of common damage, and it's also not a huge project like the fuselage will be. This will also feed my hunger for building without starting an entire new project in the middle of flying season!
So to start, here's the wing. The covering looks a little saggy at the wingtip, but overall doesn't look too bad. Or does it.....?
You can't see it in the picture, but underneath this covering and a couple layers of packing tape on the leading edge the balsa sheet is soft and broken. The tape was probably used to give it a little strength without actually fixing the problem.
Next, the aileron rubs against the wing. On a humid day I'm betting that the wood would swell a bit making aileron movement even worse. The hinges are all ok and move freely.
Moving to the bottom of the wing we have some very visible problems, all covered with more packing tape.
The wingtip is where most of the damage is found, and the last wing rib is fairly well destroyed.
There is some damage in the aileron pocket which should be easy to repair.
Here's an interesting "fix". The rib was damaged in the past and instead of splicing in properly sized balsa someone just glued the bits across the rib to bridge the gap. While it's technically functional, it's certainly not an elegant repair. The torn covering was also simply covered with more packing tape. The last problem (that I know of so far) is the servo mounting tray. To mount the servo, the previous owner held it in with drywall screws. The screw holes are now too hogged out to handle "normal" servo mounting screws, so that'll have to be fixed as well.
And I expect to find more problems as I start digging into the wing. So this is my next project (after finishing up a couple details on other planes in flying condition). My plan is to re-cover the wing with the same color scheme. The transparent blue really shows off the structure inside and I hope to make it look as though it wasn't run over by a truck. I'll probably kick off the work next weekend after I clean off the bench.
However, some people (like me) also find a lot of satisfaction in re-building (rescuing) planes. There are tons of cheap planes out there at swap meets, on Craigslist, from friends, etc that would be flyable with a bit of work. Since flying season is well underway and I've got plenty of flyable planes to keep me busy I decided to do a quick-ish thread on repairing a balsa wing.
Enter the Funtana S90 I picked up a couple years ago. It's had a hard life and needs a lot of TLC to get it air-worthy again. The fuselage will require a ton of work and will have to wait, but for now the right wing will be used to show how I go about fixing a plane. I picked this wing because it has a lot of common damage, and it's also not a huge project like the fuselage will be. This will also feed my hunger for building without starting an entire new project in the middle of flying season!
So to start, here's the wing. The covering looks a little saggy at the wingtip, but overall doesn't look too bad. Or does it.....?
You can't see it in the picture, but underneath this covering and a couple layers of packing tape on the leading edge the balsa sheet is soft and broken. The tape was probably used to give it a little strength without actually fixing the problem.
Next, the aileron rubs against the wing. On a humid day I'm betting that the wood would swell a bit making aileron movement even worse. The hinges are all ok and move freely.
Moving to the bottom of the wing we have some very visible problems, all covered with more packing tape.
The wingtip is where most of the damage is found, and the last wing rib is fairly well destroyed.
There is some damage in the aileron pocket which should be easy to repair.
Here's an interesting "fix". The rib was damaged in the past and instead of splicing in properly sized balsa someone just glued the bits across the rib to bridge the gap. While it's technically functional, it's certainly not an elegant repair. The torn covering was also simply covered with more packing tape. The last problem (that I know of so far) is the servo mounting tray. To mount the servo, the previous owner held it in with drywall screws. The screw holes are now too hogged out to handle "normal" servo mounting screws, so that'll have to be fixed as well.
And I expect to find more problems as I start digging into the wing. So this is my next project (after finishing up a couple details on other planes in flying condition). My plan is to re-cover the wing with the same color scheme. The transparent blue really shows off the structure inside and I hope to make it look as though it wasn't run over by a truck. I'll probably kick off the work next weekend after I clean off the bench.