Most of us are aware that water, heat and salt are bad news for our wings. Each of them individually is bad, but in combination they can cause significantly accelerated deterioration. But what’s going on exactly? And how does understanding the process help us deal with unintended exposure? Let’s [...]
Over the last couple of months we’ve had a number of gliders fail because there lines were no longer strong enough to fly safely. In each case the pilot was disappointed – that’s entirely understandable – but in a couple of cases surprised as well. So what might be [...]
You may have seen from my SIV article a couple of months ago that I was in Annecy earlier this year. While I was there I took the opportunity to visit Rip’Air, a counterpart of Aerofix in that part of the world. I’m always interested to swap notes with other [...]
Find out about fitting a replacement line and how to ensure it matches your existing lineset by fitting different loops at the maillon if necessary. Fitting a replacement line is something that can be done by most pilots given enough time, space and patience. But since linesets are prone [...]
You may have read an article that appeared in Skywings last August about porosity. In that article I referred to the diagram in Ozone’s paper about SharkNose technology which showed how the difference between the internal wing pressure and the external pressure is greatest at the leading edge (Figure 1). [...]
Since we started using laser equipment to measure glider linesets at Aerofix, we’ve measured over a thousand gliders. Measuring the distance from the risers to every attachment point on a canopy reveals exactly where line lengths deviate from specification, and the program we wrote enables us to determine exactly what [...]
So the weather’s getting better and prospects for some good flights are looking brighter. As well as feeling the excitement of spending more time in the air, some of us may be savouring thoughts of getting a new or replacement wing. If part of our thinking is that our “old” [...]
During the last few months the workshop has been very busy servicing wings in anticipation of the new season. A small proportion of those gliders have needed repair work when the pilot was unaware that there was any damage. So what kind of damage can easily go unnoticed? We can [...]
Performance and safety of our gliders depend on them remaining in trim
