"Details Make The Difference"

N2679E was stored in a small T-hangar at Air-Glades airport on the south-west side of Okeechobee lake during the 2005 hurricane known as "Hurricane Wilma." While this relatively mild hurricane did little or no damage to the surrounding T-hangars and buildings, the door on this hangar was ripped off - the only one to have that happen! The door fell on the poor little champ, smashing the wing leading edge, as well as the nose bowl. Wind ripped threw the small hangar, swirling any loose objects and smashing them into the Aeronca. Something heavy (most likely the boat that was stored beside the airplane) fell on the left horizontal stabilizer, twisting the fuselage. When the storm was over, both wings had cracked spars, badly damaged leading edges, mangled wingtips, a twisted fuselage and several damaged control surfaces.

 

Upon discovering the poor condition of the Champ the owner was heartsick, sure his little bird was a goner. In fact, after talking to the local maintenance shop, he was ready to sell it for whatever he could get! Before selling it, it was arranged for me to take a look at the plane to see if it was repairable. Arriving at his hangar and surveying the aircraft, I found it was quite repairable. Thus, we loaded up his bashed up little bird on a goose-neck trailer and hauled it to Indiantown Airport.

 

Upon uncovering the fuselage, it was found that the tubing had become quite weak due to internal rust and several sections of tubing were replaced. This explained why the fuselage twisted so easily. Other places suffered from corrosion as well. One of the horizontal stabilizers was so badly corroded that it had to be replaced with a new unit from Wag-Aero.

 

Another interesting thing we ran into was that most of the aircraft was covered with TWO layers of fabric. It appeared that this aircraft was covered with the Ceconite method (note the blue colored dope), however this method does not call for two layers of fabric. The only thing we could come up with was that the first layer had failed and the decision was made that it would be easier to cover the first layer with new fabric rather than putting new fabric over the bare structure. This would obviously add quite a bit of weight and seems to be against good judgement, but perhaps there were other reasons we are not aware of.

 

In addition to being very old, both sets of wing spars had long cracks that made repair more work than it was worth. So, new spars were purchased for both wings from an outfit called "Rainbow Aviation." This company holds an STC for a newer design on the Champ spars. These spars are reinforced a little better and offer more strength. This alternation does not exempt this plane from the repetitive wood spar inspection required by the airworthiness directive issued by the FAA some time ago, but it was a large improvement nonetheless.

 

Once all the repairs were made, fabric was glued, ironed, brushed and sprayed all the way up to the final coat of Poly-Spray. The owner opted for high gloss Rancho Silver with large, orange lettering. It looked a little odd to us at first, but grows on you after a while. Metallic Aero-Thane proved to be a challenge to apply. While there were no liquid runs, the metallic particles in the paint wanted to "creep" together and create "tiger" stripes. I've painted automotive metallic paint before and it wasn't nearly as much of a challenge. Perhaps twice the amount of light coats at half the volume will do the trick next time.