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Bush repairs, Alaska style

A short video for lunchtime watching, and for making airworthiness inspectors faint.



Andreas IOM

Well, if its a choice between flying the bent plane out or spending the night fighting off grizzles…

Upper Harford private strip UK, near EGBJ, United Kingdom

Speaking of grizzlies, here is a story of repairs to a Piper Cub mauled by a bear.

LKBU (near Prague), Czech Republic

The wider point here is that there are loads of places rather closer to home where one would do practically any DIY repair, else the plane might be scrapped over a totally trivial reason.

For example if you had a prop strike at the Scilly Isles EGHE, the logistics would be impressive. An insurer would probably request a dismantle of the plane. They did that with a TB20 in Turkey; someone on EuroGA IIRC.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Here in Canada there is a disproportionate amount of removing damaged light planes back to the nearest road by helicopter, and it’s expensive. Insurers consider other ways of reducing their payout. In Ontario, it is not permitted to “leave” a wreck, it must be cleaned up. I buddy of mind force landed his 180 floatplane into a swamp. It was not damaged. It was not adequately insured. He had to pay to have it helicopter slung out, $23,000, just to the road, then disassemble and trailer home. Several friends and I went to get a crashed Maule floatplane once. It was more than 100 miles from the nearest road. The insurer valued it at $70,000 as was where was. (It had an undamaged very low time engine and prop, awesome avionics, and some recoverable airframe. The insurer told my boss that if we took it out, and cleaned up the site, we could have the wreck. We took three C 185 floatplanes and two long days to disassemble, preserving all the good bits, and fly everything out in bite sized pieces. You know you’re living the life, when you’re one of five guys wading out to a floating Cessna, carrying a whole IO-540 engine, then loading it up into the plane!

The farthest I have landed my plane from another person was 93 miles, during that trip, the farthest I was from a road was over 200 miles, and the farthest from an airport was over 300. Believe me, I left for the trip prepared to stay anywhere a week, and do maintenance and repairs if necessary!

Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

“if you had a prop strike at the Scilly Isles EGHE, the logistics would be impressive. An insurer would probably request a dismantle of the plane.”

I hit a fence aborting T.Off on Stronsay, Orkneys. Leading edge and prop damaged. Prop break was not on rotation, wing damage did not reach spar. So fit borrowed prop and glue cover on wing bits.
Flew with instructor and engineer Inverness to Kirkwall, instructor flew Pa28 back. Engineer and me took ferry to Stronsay and booked overnight accommodation. Landlady gave us a lift to airfield, and we worked till sunset – quite late in early August. Next day engineer finished job, and hitched a lift on an Islander, chartered by birdwatchers to see a Spanish Sparrow which had appeared on a more northerly island.
I stayed a second night, and flew back to Inverness next morning.
The insurer covered all the costs, and the propped repair back at Inverness.
The plane was red. The engineer took all the solvents, etc. with him.
I couldn’t get the dope off my fingernails. I was glad the landlady’s daughter accompanied me to the pub that evening.

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

I had a puncture once, on an ice covered lake in -20 degrees and wind. Luckily the landlady at the place had a compressor, and luckily the puncture wasn’t worse than it could hold the pressure enough to take off (with frozen fingers). Landed back at ENVA with a flat tire and got towed to the hangar by the airport personnel.

Even the simplest thing can cause huge problems unless there are helpful people around.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway
7 Posts
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