Update on the Sig Sundancer 50:

Update on the Sig Sundancer 50: The builder could not gaurantee that he hardened the holes with CA where the hardware went in the upper wing. Sig would not replace anything. SO, the second, Sundancer had been made sure to have CA hardened holes for the hardware and it flies tomorrow. (I'll bet he doesn't wring it out) Mine is the third Sundancer and I'll wait until the results of tomorrow come in to see what I'll do.

mk The wing fluttering to the ground and the fuse doing a dart is a "frightening potential".

MJKolodziej wrote:

It's hard to watch a plane come down without the wings, wings fluttering > down gently and fuse plunging. > A friend lost a Sig Sundancer 50 today. Failure could have been the lower > wing main spar(wing joiner) or hardware holding upper wing to struts. The > owner of the plane wasn't flying it. There were 4 of us there to see it > and > three of us have the same plane. How to prevent this from happening to > ours? I may just have to put a ply joiner in my wing and find a different > way to attach the upper wing. It's a pretty plane and I hate to cut into > it but it's not as pretty when in crashes so I guess I'll take > preventative > measures. > The plane survived really well. It needs a new firewall and cowl and > re-join the lower wing or a new wing., uh, and new prop, and spinner. > It was cutting some pretty stressful di-dohs (sp?) before it failed. > I don't guess anyone has experience with this plane (small group nowadays) > but I bet you've had a wing come off before. > mk > >

My one in-flight failure (when I was flying a plane I'd just repaired for someone else!!! Right after I said "Hey, watch this"!!!!) was due to a high-G maneuver plus a really badly-selected wing spar -- the grain length was less than 1-1/2 inch across a 1/4" spar.

It may be worth while to talk your buddy with the broken plane into letting the group see the wings with the covering off when he repairs it

-- seeing if it was an engineering fault or workmanship, and exactly what the problem was, should help the rest of you figure out the right modifications to undertake.