Part of Knewt's race preparation for League 2 involved getting to the hill nice and early, only to find the gate locked. Jump in car and drive off at speed to find the farmer. Take the hairpin behind the Wrecker too fast and hear a dreadful crunch as my exceedingly heavy camera bag rolls onto the Viking's V tail. Spar gone and both skins heavily creased - F@%K !!
I really wanted to fly it so good old glassfibre tape came to the rescue for a slope side patch up - it really is amazing what you can get away with. Anyhoo, back at home I used a tried, trusted and quick repair technique. Use a bit of 1/64'' ply to repair the spar. Cut a circular hole where the delamination is worst. Cut some long tows of carbon and fluff them up like cotton wool, impregnate with epoxy and stuff into the hole covering as much on the internal area as you need. Plop the hole cover back on and away you go.
Think I'll try and sneak another tail though as one of the Viking's great plus points is the low weight of the fuselage extremities. Still, at least it proved the point that the Viking tail is very tough not to break in the centre. The fact that it could be taped together and flown when a 10+ kg camera bag landed on it is pretty amazing.
Click on any photo to see a larger version - thanks to BarkWeb for the webspace
