Unfortunately there was a hangar accident with the tug, resulting in damage to my nosewheel fairing:
I would like to find a local shop in NL or close by to have it repaired. Any recommendations?
They do that on airbus…
Maybe you can do it with some style?
Take the fairing off and repair it as you would a car. We have guys here who do this and repaint on the club aircraft. It’s quite quick and simple to do. Your biggest problem is 3 colour paint matching. We keep most of ours white.
See if there are some “homebuilt” guys in your area, or perhaps a club. They will know how to fix this, and might be willing to teach you. It’s not hard, but you need the right materials, and a bit of knowledge. Also, the boat guys are pretty good at fixing fiberglass, but just remind them to keep it light – they sometimes forget that flying and floating are two different things. 😂
Bobo wrote:
You could check-out SCT they fix sailplanes and are very good in anything that has to do with glassfibre work.
Thanks so much! I’ll contact them.
It looks like chopper gun (random fiber orientation spray applied) fiberglass so any shop that works on fiberglass bodied cars (e.g. Lotus) or boats could fix it. In order for the repair to be legal you probably have to use the original specification resin, if you care. If it’s chopper gun fiberglass that likely means inexpensive polyester resin, not epoxy, which is the same stuff used for automotive fiberglass bodies or boats.
When I had a similar issue happen on the Cirrus, I took it to the local motorcycle shop and they repaired it there….
You could get it fixed by some part of the automotive industry but this will usually result in a poor and heavy repair.
My advice would be to take it to a gilder repair shop, these people understand composite structural repair techniques and will do a far better and long lasting job.
This is a thick chopper gun part, built with dune buggy technology. Its construction has nothing to do with aircraft structural composites. The main thing is that the guy doing the work maintain the shape by building up the inside with matt glass, then finishing the outside to the original shape, then cleaning up the inside. The work is basic stuff, and the neat thing about parts built like this is that they are infinitely repairable, again and again should it be necessary, without a huge amount of skill.
