Jerry Guy wrote:

These birds have 2000 to 2500 hours on them, with a
factory limit life of 5000 hrs. These aircraft have been rode hard as
flight demonstration team aircraft and appear fine. But, until someone
puts the requisite 5000 hrs on one and sends it back to be cut up by the
factory for examination it's anybodys guess what the insides look like.

The early composite gliders had hour limits on the
structure. When they reached those limits, the aircraft
were inspected, without any cutting up, and the lifetimes
were all extended by the authorities. I'm not aware of any
composite structures with lifetime limits that had anything
more onerous than an inspection requirement before
extending.

Todd Pattist
(Remove DONTSPAMME from address to email reply.)
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