The wings are reparable so they shouldn't have to
provide free replacements. Since it is a fiberglass
spar cap and the problem seems to be limited to the
wing root it MIGHT be possible to cut a slot into the

rovings and embed some Graphlite carbon fiber rods
into the spar cap. If this is doable the result could
be a far stronger spar than the original design. I

don't think you could do this with a carbon fiber spar
cap but i'm not sure about fiberglass.

http://www.marskeaircraft.com/carbonrod.html


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