"Michael" wrote in message
om...
"Boo" wrote
Less than 40 were built, and half a dozen lost major
sections of the wing in flight.

That happened in the early stage of development, right?

Uh, no. It wasn't in development at all. These were all
customer-built aircraft.

What? All aircraft go thru research & development. Quite extensive with the
GG as this article describes. Tom, to his credit basically redesigned the
Seahawk from top to bottom. http://www.glassgoose.com/cp_may1.html

Those problems were solved in the current version.

Not that I know of. AFAIK there has not been either a reliable FEA
simulation nor a long term cycle test to indicate that the 'solution'
actually fixed the problem. Nor has there been a long-term field
history.

The wing failures were addressed:
" Then the NTSB asked him to look into the cause of the failures that were
occurring. He was sent to inspect some of the aircraft involved. In one
case, the NTSB had one of the broken wings sent to the NTSB laboratory for
X-ray examination. In each case that Scott investigated (and some he didn't)
it was determined that on the wings that had failed, the upper spar caps
were not being adequately bonded to the spar! Instructions supplied with the
Seahawk kits had been devoid of an inspection procedure to ensure the
bonding of the spar caps to the spar. Furthermore, the assembly process
outlined in the Seahawk instructions led the builders to unknowingly
assemble the wings without accomplishing the necessary bond! Some of those
planes flew as long as 200 hours before wing failure! Even then, to the
credit of the aircraft, the pilots were able to fly the planes to a safe
landing in spite of having lost a whole wing! "