Relief Tube Housing - Unsafe

On Jun 18, 11:01*am, Ian wrote:

The trick is to "take them out again".

Yup, that's always worked for me as well.

On Jun 18, 10:42*am, Andy wrote:
On Jun 18, 5:45*am, Jim White wrote:

Look at the pipe cutter in the picture. No one in their right mind uses the
hull of their glider to place tools that they are using or have used. Sure
way to have a 'loose article' accident.

Judging by the picture the tube would appear to have been sensibly fitted
forward of the stick, between the pilots knees. I don't know about you
but I find it hard to fly my glider when sitting in front of the stick let
alone land it.

Jim

I'm not 100% familiar with the V2 innards, but it seems to me that the
photo was taken looking forward and that the relief tube was fitted
aft of the stick. I also can't tell whether it was an aftermarket job
or done at the factory. *It looks like one of those "pipe-within-a-
pipe" deals that allows you to extend a rigid relief tube down into
the airstream far enough that your pee doesn't get all over the tail
boom, though the inner pipe wouldn't be depicted in this picture if
that's the design. *If that was the intent, making the outer tube
flexible could make it hard to make the inner tube slide and peeing
directly into the outer tube that ends flush with the outside fuselage
shell might lead to having pee stream down the underside of the
glider. *It's hard to tell from the picture, but that's what it looked
like. *In any case installing a spear pointed up into the cockpit
seems like a good way to put your eye out, though the geometry of that
coming to pass would mean you'd have a whole lot of other things
really badly mangled already.

Maybe I'm not in my right mind, but the area under my seat pan is
flat, smooth an concave, so I generally put most of my tools, screws,
etc there then inspect that I take them all out before putting the pan
back in. Putting parts and tools on the ground is begging to lose them
or kick them around - but I don't generally have a nice shop to work
in so dirt and wind and such are bigger concerns for me, On my glider
you'd have to crack the seat pan to get it back in place on top of
something as big as a pipe cutter.

Tim, maybe you can explain the photo a tad more. *And please confirm
for everyone that you have located the pipe cutter so we can stop
worrying. *:-)

9B

Thanks Andy,

Yes the picture is taken from the back looking forward. I wasn't too
worried about putting my eye out, but if the seat pan collapsed there
would be major damage to many other body parts. I decided I would not
want to compound the damage from an accident with a spear between my
legs.

All tools were accounted for and the entire fuselage was vacuumed out
before reassembly. The vinyl tubing I added is rigid enough to act as
a guide of the relief tube to run through without any issues. If it
proved to be too flexible in the long run it will be easy to add some
PVC tubing with a flexible vinyl or rubber junction so it will bend in
the event of an accident.

TT

At 16:30 18 June 2009, Jim White wrote:
Remember Apollo 13? Or the AF Concorde that had tools left in the fuel
tank? Better not to leave them there at all.

This is sort of a cliche, but it actually happened with one of our club's
1-26s. They had been making some kind of repairs on a wing that required
riveting new sheet metal on. When the wing was picked up to move it back
to the glider, there was a God-awful thump from inside. The glider went
through the rest of its life with yet another patch just ahead of the
aileron where they had to make an access hole to get the bucking bar out.

Jim Beckman