Repairing a Composite Wing

[Mazon]

Mid airs are common at the slope, they are often unintensional. My ginger was unfortunately damaged during one of the test flights at sedili.

This was how i went about repairing.

Damage to top of wing. a long crack.


Bottom is worse. some cracks and one large portion of the wing skin was gone


hollow molded so how to repair?


For the top wing skin, i chose to fiberglass from inside.


Soak up excess epoxy as they serve no purpose and adds weight


Use x-acto knife to clean up the damage perimeter. Prepare a block of foam ready


Measure and cut a piece of foam that fits the shape of the damaged area.


Leave a gap in the LE. This is for strengthening the LE later. Then use 3M77 to glue in the foam.


Use pen knife carefully cut away excess foam. Not too much.


Sand to airfoil shape


Looking good


Prepare FG cloth. i use medium grade


Fill up leading edge with epoxy micro ballon mix. This will strengthen the LE.


I lay 2 layers of FG cloth. use satay stick to ensure smooth surface


Again soak up all the excess epoxy


Leave to dry overnight. Then remove excess FG cloth. And start sanding! i use 200grit with water. then finish with 600 grit sanding paper


Almost there. keep sanding


Airfoil maintained and finished repaired area is very strong.


Masked out for spraying


Close enough.


From far, cant see the difference


To my surprise , I weighted the finish repaired wing it didnt have any weight increase compared to before. Foam and FG cloth are light, important point is rem to soak up the excess epoxy.

Hope this helps for those who needs to repair composite wings next time.

[jansonfinn]

Mid airs are common at the slope, they are often unintensional. My ginger was unfortunately damaged during one of the test flights at sedili.

This was how i went about repairing.

Hope this helps for those who needs to repair composite wings next time.

Power!!!

[Mazon]

Another repair

The bushes at Sedili decided to have a chunk of my wing tip during one of the landing. Time for another repair.


Damage:




Repair

Using similar technique as before, the idea is to get back the same airfoil shape as well as a strong leading edge. This time round the leading edge wood pieces were cracked , it was a clean break so they can be epoxied back without much problems. The upper wing skin was relatively ok so i glassed from the inside to keep the shape and reinforce the skin. The bottom was badly pierced and cracked. First cut out the damaged pieces to have clean edge.





Cut out block of foam with similar shape to foam the shape for the airfoil. Sand the foam to airfoil shape. Then glass over with few layers of FG cloth.








Wait for epoxy to dry, remove excess, then sand to get smooth finish. Same to top wing skin.





Decals - Thanks to Dennis for the decals, they came in handy to mask out the repair, as well as add some colours to the wings

[joe yap]

Well done!

[Dting26]

repair

this repair tips is very useful, thanks for the effort on sharing.

Cheer.

[Sunstorm]

good one, mate!

i've done up some repairs myself -

some minor changes -

used Depron instead of the normal foam

used 3 layers of light fibreglass overlaid with polyester resin

used balsa filler to fill in the gaps.