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Old July 23rd 05, 03:13 PM
Gordon Arnaut
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Matt,

There was discussion recently on the Minimax list about a fatal accident
involving a wing breaking off. The accident was preceded by a ground
incident in which the airframe sustained some damage that was said to be
slight. No more verifiable details that I know, but one would assume the
builder carefully inspected the airframe before flying again and could see
no problems.

Another one that comes to mind is a Fisher that had a spar failure and which
the NTSB said was due to some wood problems and technique. I think it's safe
to say there are others.

But like I said, even where the wood fails, it is nearly impossible to
establish after the fact when the wood was damaged -- just it's impossible
to tell (without very fancy testing at the molecular level) when metal
fatigue on airframes reaches its point of no return. (That's not to compare
the two directly because wood does not have "fatigue.")

Regards,

Gordon.



"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
...
Gordon Arnaut wrote:
Matt,

Are you questioning whether an amateur-built wooden airframe has ever
failed in flight?


No, I'm simply saying I've not heard of one that failed from a problem
with the wood. I've heard of a few that had glue failures.


Because I think this would be a rather ridiculous notion. A thorough
search of the NTSB archives should turn up numerous examples.


It might, but you talked as though you had examples readily at hand so I
was asking to see a couple to save hours of searching.

Matt