The horizontal stabilizer on a glider weighs far more than any of the tail
batteries I've encountered, and when flying the glider, especially the takeoff and
landing, that heavy horizontal puts a lot more forces (vertically and twisting) on
the tail boom than the battery. In a trailer, the forces are almost entirely
vertical, and are also far less than the landing/takeoff pounding the tail gets.
So I'm skeptical the gel coat cracking is due to the battery during trailering.

How did Fidel determine it was the battery/trailering, and not the normal
operation of the glider, or some other cause?


Dan Marotta wrote on 3/12/2020 10:06 AM:
Hi Eric,

The advice I got from Fidel was specific to batteries mounted high in the vertical
fin.* Think of an inverted pendulum.* The visible damage appears as long cracks in
the gel coat partially around the tail boom at the leading edge of the base of the
fin.* I wouldn't be surprised that there would be damage to the underlying
structure, but I have no direct knowledge of that.* I doubt there's any mechanical
problem with fuselage mounted batteries, though I always removed mine so that
they'd be fully charged when I arrived at my destination.* They were ease to
remove, however.

Dan

On 3/12/2020 8:43 AM, Eric Greenwell wrote:
wrote on 3/12/2020 1:35 AM:
I'll second the recommendation on batteries OUT for trailering. Especially tail
fin installs.

Is that based on gel coat cracking (the original reason for removing the tail
battery), the potential for fires caused by the battery while trailering, or to
protect the battery from damage during trailering?

Removing the main batteries from a Schleicher motorglider (ASH 26E and later),
and DG motorgliders is very time-consuming. Since I'm not aware of any problems
caused by leaving the main batteries in during trailering in these gliders, I
think removing and replacing them is likely to cause more problems than it avoids.




--
Eric Greenwell - Washington State, USA (change ".netto" to ".us" to email me)
- "A Guide to Self-Launching Sailplane Operation"
https://sites.google.com/site/motorg...ad-the-guide-1