Such a major flaw in a wing spar should be replaced at the
manufacturers expense IMHO.

It is inexcusable for these wings to still be allowed to fly at lower
placarded limits as DG has no knowledge of the condition of the entire
fleet.
DG should sue Elan for screwing up and DG owners should get a free set
of wings to replace the bad ones they bought in good faith.
Its not like you can glue a new spar in the place where its bad!!

Regards

Al



On Apr 16, 11:39 am, Steve Davis
wrote:
At 17:36 16 April 2007, Marc Ramsey wrote:

Alan Montague wrote:
Is there any scope for non-destructive testing by
industrial
radiology?

X-rays are sensitive in showing up minor ripples in
children's bones? Would they work for the ripples
in
my spar?

I would think that an ultrasonic inspection method

could be developed for much less cost than radiography.
Ultrasonic might be able to look into the layers of
rovings
and see how deep the undulations are. You might want

to check with some companies which make composite
aircraft and composite spars. Cirrus Design, Scaled

Composites, Adam Aircraft etc..., and find out how
they
do NDT on their designs.I again look at the Duo spar inspections as an example,
the original
protocol involved cutting holes in the wing skin and
visually inspecting
the spars, in short order SH evolved to using a borescope
through the
existing inspection ports and a few holes drilled in
the root rib and
aileron cutouts, eventually someone figured how to
do it with
inexpensive lipstick cameras and long rods.

Mark