wing removal

[kerry]

  On 10/23/2016 at 4:58 AM, carusoam said:

Air frame failures from thunderstorms, yes.  That's with all the structural strength available.

If you haven't seen your steel tubes before, it would be good to know how they are...

There is an SB that covers how to do it and what insulation should be removed.

This would be similar to riding a bicycle with a missing or corroded tube.  You could get away with it, mostly...

Best regards,

-a-

Expand  

I can understand how the corrosion can weaken the air frame but I never heard of a Mooney air frame failure other than wood structures.  I've read a lot of Mooney NTSB reports and never seen a accident occur because of corrosion to the longerons. If there has been some failures I curious to how many.  I did read this corrosion problem is very rare.

[kerry]

I found one with a left wing that separated.  http://www.ntsb.gov/_layouts/ntsb.aviation/brief.aspx?ev_id=78191&key=0

[carusoam]

Kerry,

Any idea how to sort this data?

http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/data/Documents/datafiles/ARC2004.xls

That would lead to answers...

From a less data derived method, when discussing flying in IMC, the warnings are clear about avoiding vertical build up of clouds.  This is based on the strength of vertical airflow to the strength of the Mooney airplane.

We also have yellow and red lines on the ASI because ordinary forces on the airframe can easily exceed a few Gs...  marketing photos show a whole bunch of people standing a Mooney wing showing how strong it is.  How often is disaster delivered in nicely distributed amounts?

Unfortunately, my memory isn't strong enough to point out individual Mooney losses of this type if they exist.

 

Is it a better question to ask how many Gs can a Mooney pull with corroded spars or rusted tubes?  

The question gets reworded to simply, how deep can the corrosion pits be before the spar is considered not whole enough to bare the needed load?

For that, there Are solid answers that are available in the MM. Some planes have extensive acceptable corrosion and wear limits.  Moonies are very limited with what is allowed.  The FAA uses the typical method of pointing to what is acceptable by having the plane companies put it in writing in their MMs.  The acceptable pits are (probably) measured in thousandths of an inch....

Overall, Mooneys are strong, but Mother Nature is 10X stronger.  Airplane structures are quite thin and pliable compared to the forces that can be unleashed.

This is not a doomsday prophecy, just a laws of physics kind of discussion...

Last question, how does the wood wing MM handle the similar yet different wood issues?

Best regards,

-a-