DG-300/303 owners...

Markus Graeber wrote:
On Apr 9, 9:22 am, "Mike Yankee" wrote:
DG... has spent to date about EUR 10,000 to do the required testing.
Are we supposed to be impressed that DG spends this on the fleet?
That is less than it would cost to ship, inspect and repair a single
US-based glider!

A quick clarification to my original cost translation after carefully
re-reading the original German post:

The inspection is estimated at EUR 6000 per glider. If a repair is
deemed necessary it can easily reach EUR 5000 PER MAIN SPAR. Since a
glider has 2 wings with 2 spars we'd end up with a worst case scenario
of EUR 16000 per glider and a potential total of some 376 main spars
affected in a fleet of some 500 gliders (initial test showed 3 out of
8 main spars defective).

3 of 8 in a sample that size (8) is playing pretty fairly free and loose
with statistics. Did DG sample gliders they thought would be affected
or did they sample across the entire manufacturing run? The numbers
could be much different.
Also, since they say they've tested 8 gliders, it costs EUR 6000/glider
to test, and they've spent EUR 10,000, I'm assuming they've only tested
wrecked gliders. That, or they hired an accountant from Enron. ;-)




Shawn

On Apr 9, 11:52 am, Shawn wrote:

3 of 8 in a sample that size (8) is playing pretty fairly free and loose
with statistics. Did DG sample gliders they thought would be affected
or did they sample across the entire manufacturing run? The numbers
could be much different.
Also, since they say they've tested 8 gliders, it costs EUR 6000/glider
to test, and they've spent EUR 10,000, I'm assuming they've only tested
wrecked gliders. That, or they hired an accountant from Enron. ;-)

Shawn

8 samples implies that they tested 4 gliders including the one that
showed the original defect after a severe landing accident. From what
I understand that original glider was repaired and is airworthy again
(and for sale by the club in Germany that owns it), it probably is the
only one right now with a guarantee that it has no main spar defects
and as such can be operated within the old operating limits...

I would guess they tested whatever they had at hand and of course the
sample might not be representative but all you can go by right now to
get an idea of the extend of the problem; especially since Elan is not
able/willing to provide any more information as to when they did the
change to the wing manufacturing process which can possibly lead to
the main spar defects discovered.

I assume the EUR 10,000 mentioned is the cost of the load test & tests
to destruction they did on affected wings to establish the new
operating limitations.

Markus