On Friday, May 15, 2015 at 3:54:17 PM UTC-6, Charlie M. (UH & 002 owner/pilot) wrote:
On Friday, May 15, 2015 at 2:59:26 PM UTC-4, Bill D wrote:
Lets say you are deploying a retractible gear glider in a club with members who some might suspect of landing the thing gear-up someday. (Of course, you private owners never land gear-up...) Is there a way to minimize the damage when the inevitable day arrives?

Maybe. One of my favorite materials is UHMW-PE - a plastic with many superlative characteristics including astonishing abrasion resistance and a very low coefficient of friction. A 9mm thick strip, 150mm wide might very well withstand a gear-up landing of an 850 kg glider. It's also very light, cheap and a shade of white closely matching gel-coat.

Until recently, there was no way to glue this stuff to anything even itself but new epoxy adhesives have appeared on the market that advertize the ability to stick it to almost anything including fiber reinforced composite epoxy structures like glider belly's and wing tips.

So, obviouisly, some testing is in order before slapping a strip of UHMW-PE on the belly of your glider. A test rig on a pick-up's reciever hitch could slam a patch of it down on a concrete runway to simulate a gear-up. Anybody interested?

While a "sacrificial layer" seems good, best method I've seen is to have the offender help with doing the repairs.
Granted, it means some glider downtime, but "word of mouth" goes miles as a reminder.
Since I tend to do "final finish & polish", I have a vested interest in what happens to ships.
;-)

[yes, UHMW-PE is a great material, even "good" adhesives are short term in my eyes.]

Much better to just put the glider back on its wheel and go fly. Usually the offender is sufficiently embarassed.

Are you saying the UHMW-PE adhesives don't really last?