*** Andy Steere's P-47 ***

(Damage from the First Flight)

These are some pictures of most of the resulting damage caused by the "landing" on the first flight.

Notes about the pictures below:

  • I didn't start taking pictures until I was already in the process of repairs.
  • Somehow I managed to not take a picture of the damage to the side of the fuse, down by the wing saddle. The fuse sheeting had a 4" crack running from where the wing saddle broke, back toward the tail. There is also a pretty good ding to the top of the fuse up by the cowl.
  • I also missed taking a picture of the ding to the wing's leading edge from the prop.

    STATIC IMAGES

    (Click on links to download picture size of choice)

    bwing1_320.jpg This is the bottom right wing. The landing gear and their mounting blocks tore out on both sides and caused damage to the bottom of the wing. On this side it cracked the sheeting between the landing gear block and the flap-servo hatch, along with tearing the gear mounting-rails out.
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    bwing2_320.jpg This is the bottom left wing. When the gear tore free, it came back and crushed one of the wing-ribs. This was the worst of the damage. This photo was taken after the rib was repaired and new sheeting was installed in a couple places.
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    lwing1_320.jpg Top left wing. Damage here is limited to a few dings in and around the flaps and a few scuff marks. The block of wood you see is the wing-mounting block... complete with un-damaged nylon bolt. I unscrewed the other block at the field, as it was still attached to part of the fuse.
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    rwing1_320.jpg More extensive damage to the top of the right wing. Two holes and a ding behind and to the left of the gun barrels, a ding to the leading edge from the prop, a cut on the far right, and a ding to the aileron.
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    rwing2_320.jpg A close-up of the damage.
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    cjm1_320.jpg This is the retract from the right wing. It is bent the worst and is the same retract that bent before (which probably explains why it bent more than the left retract).
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    cjm2_320.jpg This is a close-up of the bent section. The inner pushrod is not a rod at all, its a tube. If this was a 1/4" piece of music wire, instead of a metal tube, it probably wouldn't have bent.
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    cjm3_320.jpg This is the left retract. Hardly bent at all... but enough to effect the oleo motion. No problem bending this one back enough to work fine.
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    fuse1_320.jpg The fuse wouldn't have sustained much damage, but a bad glue joint caused the lite-ply crutch to break in several places and damage the bottom of the wing-saddle on the right hand side. It also broke the choke servo arm, because that pushrod stayed with part of the wing-mounting block, which stayed attached to the wing. Didn't strip the Hitec HS-85 servo though, because the arm was already pointed in the direction of the wing-mounting block.
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    fuse2_320.jpg This is a close-up of the bad glue joint in question. Didn't cause the accident, or even contribute to it... but did cause more damage to the fuse than would have otherwise occurred. Instead of simply pulling the hardwood block out, the wing pulled this out instead.
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    ©COPYRIGHT NOTICE: You are granted permission to view these images and movies while accessing these web pages, but I retain all rights to the images and they may not be used for any other purpose without my permission.

    Copyright 2001-2002 - Andy Steere

    Last modified on 07/15/2002

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