Vintage stuff.

For what it is worth.

We have just completed the major work of refurbishing our club's 1956 Scheibe
Bergfalke II/55.

We returned her to the hangar resplendent in new red and white fabric and dope
and with a lot of repairs...

So - for those in the northern hemisphere who have the time to look. It might be
worth looking at your older mounts. We found much evidence of damage that had
not been repaired properly, and was not in the log books. Somewhere in the deep
dark past (before the English logs started in the early 1970s) she was basically
broken in two. Some of the welds were worse than I am capable of. There were
numerous dents and bent tubes, that were not visible without a full bare metal
strip down. What is amazing is the decades of hard use and thousands of landings
without failure. We know of 13,000 flights, and we have logs for less than half
of the aircraft's chronological life.

Scheibe were slow, but very helpful in finding drawings we needed to re
manufacture parts. As an example we had to have bearings made up, because the
original design could no longer be sourced. There were 14 tube sleeves over
damaged tube sections by the time Keith had finished.

One thing is sure though - we can expect many years of solid service from her
again. I wonder how many glass trainers will be as repairable at 38 years old.

I have put a couple of pictures up on the club gallery at
http://www.whisperingwings.org.za/ga...bumName=ZS-GSI

Other club members have more pictures for later.

Bruce