Mylar seals for elevator

On May 21, 6:00 pm, Rick Walters wrote:
At 19:09 21 May 2008, Darryl Ramm wrote:On May 20, 12:14 pm, JJ Sinclair wrote:
On May 20, 7:41 am, Andreas Maurer wrote:

Darryl,

The ship was a Ventus A and the bail out occured while flying out of
Uvalde.
The glider received very little damage. Apparently the gear was down and
the gear "cage" took most of the impact. I owned it for a while but it
has
been passed on to someone else. It has not flown since the accident.

Ron Tabery had a similar problem in NZ flying his N3. He landed OK but
with very marginal elevator control. A good item to put on a checklist.

Rick Walters

Hi JJ

Is it true that the ship later floated back, falling leaf style, by
itself to earth with some significant damage but was later repaired?

Darryl

I always wondered as well about something that happened to me. I was
flying my DG-303 out of Parowan and I landed and then noticed shreds
of the top surface elevator transition tape handing from the
tailplane. The underlying mylar was perfectly OK. so I just cleaned
off and reapplied the transition tape. All I recall that happened on
that flight was I was rained on a little in some virga - and there
were some very small hail pellets. I was up to 18,000' on that flight
and with full ballast, but never really fast. There was not a mark
elsewhere and the aileron transition tapes were fine. The transition
tapes were in mint condition, the glider never spent time tied down in
the sun etc. I though it was strange and asked around and an ASW-27
had exactly the same thing happen to his glider as well on the same
day and if I recall correctly had also flown through some virga/light
rain.

So is this a known thing - maybe small hail pellets will take off the
transition tape? Why only the elevator tape?

Darryl