The Blanik L-13 shall rise again! (?)

Ours is around 800 hours now. It only had 200 hours when it was parked and not flown for twenty years. I have not seen any other low time ones in the US. Most are well over 2000 hours as they are now 40 years or older.

On Saturday, October 29, 2016 at 5:53:11 PM UTC-6, Tim Taylor wrote:
Ours is around 800 hours now. It only had 200 hours when it was parked and not flown for twenty years. I have not seen any other low time ones in the US. Most are well over 2000 hours as they are now 40 years or older.

I think Tom's in Idaho is fairly low time. When I did a quick survey, several were well under the 1800 hours that the Austrian failure happened at. But I'm still curious about the actual usage history of that one.

IRCC, the original service life was 3650 hours. Those returned to the factory for the wing root modification, the L-13A1, we granted something like a 5000 life. From what I gathered there was no accurate list of those having had the modification and they could only be identified by counting rivets in the root rib. If any were ever imported into the US, I have no idea. The FAA didn't appear to address these.

I'd heard second hand that the L-13 owned privately by the main benefactor of the WAAAM in Hood River had 300 hours when the gliders were grounded.

But then, before repainting, the L-13 tied out at Boulder had three N-number shadows on various parts.

YMMV on an AMOC, but if a $15K AMOC put a 2000 hour L-13 that's in good condition overall back in the air with a 5000 hour service life, it might be appealing.

Frank Whiteley