The good thing is that there’s a shop on the field which probably maintains this airplance, because the tiny field nearby where it came from has no shop.
EDML is hardly an inconvenient place, it has plenty of maintenance facilities.
Even Samos would be no problem, fly in one qualified person, take off the wings and ship it. No problem at all.
The shop at our field (EDML) flew an engine to a Greek island some years ago and installed it there!
It will cost him something like 8K. New prop blades and prop overhaul, maybe 5K. New leg front gear and reinstall, maybe 2.5K. And 0.5K to open the ROTAX gearbox and checking if everything is still OK there (should be as there is an overload clutch in the gearbox). That’s the real advantage of ROTAX engines with gearbox and overload clutch. It’s almost change the prop and fly away!
That’s great. A similar accident with a Cirrus SR22T with a three blade Hartzell composite prop (also repaired at our field) was € 80 K …. prop alone was + 30 K. And that was without the NLG. The guy had taxied over some concrete tiedown blocks at night.
There are other aspects which could cost more e.g. bent engine mounts or a distorted firewall. Even a gear-up accident in a hangar (somebody disabling squat switches and raising the gear) can do that.
I’d be really wary of a plane that is certified to withstand a hard landing bounce but whose firewall can buckle after a gear-up in the hangar.
The lever arm from the front of the engine to the firewall is quitea bit longer than the lever arm from the landing gear, and also the load may lead to attachment points that are not libked to the gear
For the very first hours in PPL, the Aquila is good because it relays the seat-of-the-pants feel pretty well. But they have too much downtime, for various reasons – wheels, gear, engine overheat, etc. – not robust enough.
It may be cheaper to repair it but a 152 wouldn’t be broken and fly on.
The lever arm from the front of the engine to the firewall is quitea bit longer than the lever arm from the landing gear, and also the load may lead to attachment points that are not linked to the gear
Exactly – two examples showing the nose gear to firewall lever arm being about 1/3 or less of the propeller to firewall lever arm:
This I believe is an Aquila
