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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Canopy porosity In the past two articles we’ve focussed on line length and strength. But our gliders’ performance and safety also depends critically on the porosity of the fabric because increased porosity will reduce internal pressure. So how good does the porosity have to be, and what causes it to [...]
