Winter work at glider airport

Inverted25

Inverted25

Well-Known Member
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We just bought this L-23 about 2 weeks ago. It hadnt flown in years plus it was sitting right by the ocean. We found a few rat nests in it. The guy couldnt figure out why none of the instruments worked. Turned out the rats had eaten away most of the lines running to the instruments. We got all the plumbing replaced now and it is completely stripped and power washed. Next step tomorrow is to put the self etching primer on then we will decide what color scheme we are going to go with. For sitting by the ocean for all those years un hangared it didnt really have that much damage. Just a few spots that we had to deal with. Had a bit of rust on the inside though. We pretty much tore out all the controls and had to sand blast and repaint them. Had to order a few replacement parts as well. Overall it has turned out to be a good project. We are lucky at our club to have a bunch of A&P IA members to do this work for free. We also have a professional painter who is handling this paint job for free. This is what makes soaring clubs so fun to be a part of. The next project is the black 1-26 which you can see the tail of in this picture. It will be have the same treatment of stripping and painting done before the season starts again in april. I'll post mroe pictures as we get farther along.
 
Cool!

The process seems similar with some of the heavily used gliders from the west. We cleaned out a 2-32 and gained 22 lbs of useful load last winter, most of which was the red dust.
 
drunkenbeagle said:
I think our Pawnee was 120 lbs lighter after the last time I helped wash it...

Know of any other L-23's for sale?
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I know this is extremely early and premature since I just got into gliders,

BUT

if the price is right, it's just another reason for me to be down in homestead every sunday morning.

Btw since you're from florida you might be familiar. What else is there for gliders around here?
 
Ha, the first annual when I owned the Stinson L-5 I cleaned the whole inside. For grins I used a baby scale to weigh all the detritus I had removed. Almost 20 lbs of old fasteners, pens, coins, etc. That was just the tandem cockpit, it was another couple lbs out of the tail.
 
I think our Pawnee was 120 lbs lighter after the last time I helped wash it...

Know of any other L-23's for sale?​
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About 5 years ago the club totally rebuilt our Pawnee. All new fabric, overhauled the engine which changed it from 235hp to 250hp. It was like a brand new airplane. You wouldnt beleive the crap that had gathered in the back of the tail. For those of you who have never been in a Pawnee the entire thing is accessibile all the time. You could literally get behind the seat and crawl all the way to the tailwheel inside the airplane. They were built like this to make for easy maintence. But it also is a pain when you have something fall out your pocket while towing and have it end up back there.


No it took us about 3 months to locate this L-23. We found plenty of glass ships. But the rest of our fleet is glass ships and we wanted something that could take a beating and be cheaper to fix for the new students. Advanced students move on to the grob 103.
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Inverted25, this is off topic. But do you know anything about the emergency AD on the L-13; did they find a solution?
Was the L-23 affected by a similar AD?

I've been out of the gliding world for about half a year now.
 
Inverted25, this is off topic. But do you know anything about the emergency AD on the L-13; did they find a solution?
Was the L-23 affected by a similar AD?
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The L-13 AD that grounded the fleet was due to corrosion in the wing spar. The corrosion is beleived to be caused due to the fact that two different kinds of metals touch together there. There was a similar AD on the wing for the same reason a few years ago that required pulling the skin off the end the wing to inspect then re riveted that skin back on. What a pain in the ass that was. Unfortuanly there is no good way as of right now to check for this corrosion. To get to the spot that needs checked would require dissassebly of the wing to the point that you would need the factory jigs to put it back together. The FAA basically wants nothing to do with this problem either. They have left it totally up to the manufactor to come up with a solution to this problem. The manufactor is saying that they are exploring different ways to check the wing, but from what we have seen from them, it doesnt seem like they are very interested in finding a solution to the problem. They no longer make the L-13 so they dont seem to really care if they keep flying. Right now there are a few groups here in the United States trying to find ways to check for the corrsion and get it approved by the FAA. Right now though there is little hope among L-13 owners that the FAA will ever approve a solution that would be cost effective. Right now all possible solutions will cost more than the glider is worth. Looks like all L-13 will become scrap metal at some point. We are holding on to ours for at least this next season hoping for a miracle that something that is cost effective is approved. But at the same time we weren't waiting around to find out so we bought a L-23 to replace it.

The L-23 has a different wing design that isnt prone to the type of corrosion that was found on the L-13. But alot of people are starting to get away from the metal gliders because of the L-13 AD. Glass trainers are becoming much more popular now.
 
Inverted25 said:
They have left it totally up to the manufactor to come up with a solution to this problem. The manufactor is saying that they are exploring different ways to check the wing, but from what we have seen from them, it doesnt seem like they are very interested in finding a solution to the problem. They no longer make the L-13 so they dont seem to really care if they keep flying. Right now there are a few groups here in the United States trying to find ways to check for the corrsion and get it approved by the FAA. Right now though there is little hope among L-13 owners that the FAA will ever approve a solution that would be cost effective. Right now all possible solutions will cost more than the glider is worth. Looks like all L-13 will become scrap metal at some point.
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Yeah, that.

As written now, the AD is basically impossible to comply with. It calls for examaning the wing spar with a 10X loupe looking for stress cracks. Removing the wing spar is really not all that feasible. Additionally, Blanik wanted a report with the number of dual, solo, and aerobatic hours for the life of the airframe. Since no one had been logging this, it is essentially impossible to provide.

A real shame too, as the L-13 is one of the more popular trainers in the world, and there ain't many L-23's out there to replace them with.
 
Well thanks for the info...even though that is depressing as hell.
I'm not sure what my old club will do. I know that they picked up two other gliders to keep the club going, but that L-13 was our one glider for a long time.

I really have a thing for the L-13. It was a love-able trainer.

/Hijack

Keep the pics coming!
 
Douglas said:
Well thanks for the info...even though that is depressing as hell.
I'm not sure what my old club will do. I know that they picked up two other gliders to keep the club going, but that L-13 was our one glider for a long time.

I really have a thing for the L-13. It was a love-able trainer.
...
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Yes, rather bittersweet looking back on my last flights in them. Great thermals, but they were cut short because I was giving intro rides. Fortunately, the last ride of the day said "Skydiving is way more fun than this!" I replied "Oh really?" Then 30 minutes of Chandelles, Lazy 8's, and negative G's under a cloud street. If only we had parachutes at the time.

It would really suck if my last Blanik flight was a rope break.
 
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