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Need help with damage at Osh

RVbySDI

Well Known Member
Well it happened again. We were damaged at the 2011 Sun n Fun tornado. Now we have damage at Osh. It is not as bad as the Avenger but we had a tail dragger run into the back of our rudder. It is destroyed. Is there anyone around Osh that may have a finnished rudder I may be able to use to get home on. If anyone can help please call my cell. My cell is (for-zero-5 / ate 2 two / zero 6 two one)

Any help would be appreciated.
 
Edit: I guess I am no help, the RV-9 comment came up while I was typing.

I'm not near Osh, but I have an RV-7/7A rudder collecting dust while I finish the rest of the plane. I could ship it or pass it off to someone headed that way from Dallas.

The bottom fairing isn't attached yet, but It is drilled and fitted, so I could throw some blind rivets in and be good enough. Let me know if you need it. Three 1 zero, nine one 8, 2 four zero 2
 
Thanks to everyone

I want to thank everyone for your offers to help. This truly is a great community. So Butch is driving to Osh tonight and bringing a rudder for me to bolt on. Butch you are a lifesaver. In addition, after the incident I went down to the Vans tent and talk to Van himself about it. Van has a retired RV 9 in their shop. They are pulling the rudder off and overnighting it to the show. I now have a Plan A and a Plan B. If something happens with Butch's trip, I will have Van's rudder sometime tomorrow. If Butch's rudder works Van tells me they will be able to put it on their truck and take it back when they go home. Things are looking good for now. Thank you Butch and Van and everyone on this forum.

Live Long and Prosper!
 
Steve and Mary,
So sorry to hear the bad news!!! We would like to help any way we can - even if it is just buying your dinner :) where are you guys? Send us a message with your number.
 
Tools

Steve:

Check your email and or PM, if you need tools, let me know. (phone number in PM and email) I am still at OSH.
 
Dang bad luck Steve - but look at it this way .... you "just" need a rudder - the other guy needs a teardown for a prop strike!

Incredible community, for sure.
 
We plan to be at the emergency repair station around 7:00 am tomorrow to remove the rudder. Butch is bringing his rudder at 8:00. I am willing to work with a peanut gallery if need be. So if anyone is interested come on down.

Oh and Paul, you know the other guy. We flew into Osh with you and Louise two years ago. Yep, he did it to me.
 
Thanks

A note of thanks to everyone who helped me with my damaged rudder at Osh. A super thanks to Butch who saw my post before he left for his weekend trip to Osh last night and called to tell me he could bring me a rudder which he did. It was a good rudder with good workmanship. He brought it out to the emergency repair station Friday morning before 7:00. I arrived shortly after 7:00 and started taking my damaged rudder off and putting his on. Everything worked nicely. By 9:30 we had the new rudder on and I was ready to fly.

In addition to Butch's rudder, I had gone to talk with Vans after the accident. They had a retired 9 back at the shop. Workers in Aurora went to work removing it and packing it in a shipping crate and shipped it overnight FedEx. I received a call from the EAA warehouse shortly after 9:30 that the crate was in their warehouse. I had made arrangements with both Butch and Vans in case there was a problem with one. I did not need the Vans rudder so they are planning to haul it back on their truck with the rest of their show materials. It was a bit of redundancy but I wanted contingencies.

Well I am writing this while back home in my living room after flying home with Butch's rudder. Butch, Van, Gus, Scott and the crew back at the Vans shop and all of the guys at the emergency repair station, especially Cy for driving me all over the grounds, I cannot thank you enough. Jerry thanks for the sandwich and water right before takeoff. I especially needed the water during the flight. John, thanks for thinking of me and working to get things done. Even though we could not work on the repair Thirsday night I appreciate the effort. Lastly, Figgs and Phil, thanks for staying around and helping. Even friends who "slash" up your rudder are still friends worth having.

I still have some work to do to get the rudder completely back to new condition but I am home now and can breathe a sigh of relief. Thanks everyone.
 
Glad you're home

Hey Steve,

Very glad to hear you got home safely!! I was 2 airplanes behind you in that long departure nightmare. My 9 year old son was with me. We saw you get out on your wing and throw your hands up.

Must have been frightening! After you guys pushed off into the grass I started checking my rear more closely :)

My boy asked what you were going to do? I told him that you're in the best place to have this happen and that you'd likeky just go over to Kidventure and have a crew of munchkins build you a new one by days end!

Darren
 
Yes it is a great community we fly with. I had a neighbor at the airport tell me I must be the luckiest guy he knows since I was able to get a rudder from someone so quickly. I don't consider it luck. I just think it is the fact I hang around (on the web) with a great bunch of people.
 
I was right behind the plane that rearended you. It didn't look good. I was wondering how it all worked out. Glad you got it fixed up and flying.
 
New Avatar

Lastly, Figgs and Phil, thanks for staying around and helping. Even friends who "slash" up your rudder are still friends worth having.

Glad everyone made it back. It was lonely flying home.

So, I understand that Jerry Fischer has christened UK Figs with a new call sign "SLASH", which is perfect. How about a new avatar contest for Slash to help celebrate his "coming out"? Anybody got any ideas for a good one?

P.S. Oh and before anybody thinks we are taking this too lightly, we try and do things right. Including having a departure briefing at homebuilt headquarters and also at the airplanes before we started up. Nobody can feel worse about this than SLASH!

Joe
 
So, I understand that Jerry Fischer has christened UK Figs with a new call sign "SLASH", which is perfect. How about a new avatar contest for Slash to help celebrate his "coming out"? Anybody got any ideas for a good one?



Poor Figs...he ain't never gonna live this down! ;)
 
Still feel bad


Poor Figs...he ain't never gonna live this down! ;)

Lesson learned the hard way, was tracking Steve in the conga line and looked inside to double check the tower frequency was in monitor mode prior to the line and ended up catching up to him and the spinner hit the rudder. Shut down the motor but it took a few revolutions to stop which took the plastic leading edge guards and a few nicks off the front of my Catto prop and tore up the lower end of Steve's rudder.
Very sick feeling and first accident in a plane since getting license in 1979 made even worse by tearing up your flying buddies plane.:mad:

I will say the RV community response was superb to come up with a rudder for Steve overnight, which included Craig and Nichole Catto coming up with a prop and spinner from the ECI IO-360 demonstrator that same day.

Nevertheless lesson learned to keep your head outside at Oshkosh.

As Dan said I know I will not live this down :eek:

Figs/Slash
 
The rudder damage saga of Oshkosh 2015

So here is a follow up of the adventures of my OSH 2015 trip. I do not have the plane back to normal yet but it is in the works. Here is a synapses of the events:

Thursday was our scheduled departure date for leaving Oshkosh this year. We had originally planned to leave Wednesday but we were having such a great time that all but one of us traveling together decided to stay one more day. So after a fun filled 5 days we were ready to head home. Things were flowing smoothly that morning. We tore down our campsite, packed the planes and made our way over to homebuilt headquarters where all of us processed our camping refunds. After getting back to the airplanes we had a short briefing to discuss our plan of action for departure from OSH. Around 9:15 or so we had our planes out ready for the scooters to taxi us out to the conga line. Made it to the conga line and were slowly making our way to the end of 36L. We were a short 15 minutes or so from making it to the runway when Mary and I heard and felt the most horrible rumbling imaginable. In fact it really was ?unimaginable? because for a second or so I could not figure out for the life of me what was making such an incredible noise. The entire airplane was shaking and vibrating like it was being torn to shreds. My initial thought was something catastrophic was happening to the engine. But we were at idle. I looked at the engine gauges and everything was normal. We were actually stopped and the engine was idling contentedly around 750 RPMs. Nothing unusual. Then after a torturous, oh I don?t know, 500 milliseconds from the initial realization that it was not the engine, it dawned on me what was happening. David Figgins? (be it forever known that as of 8-23-2015 David Figgins shall be christened ?SLASH?) RV7 had slowly crept forward as the conga line was stopped. His prop began chewing away at my rudder! All of this occurred in a matter of seconds. Seconds were all it took for the damage to be done.

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My rudder was shredded!

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There would be no flying today! Where we were on the taxiway was just a short distance over to the emergency repair station. We taxiied into the station and I went to work trying to get a replacement rudder to the show that would allow me to fly home. One of the guys running the show at the repair station drove me over in their new aluminum body Ford p/u to the Vans tent. Van was actually there so I told him of the incident and asked if they had any completed rudders at their factory in Oregon. They did not build quick build rudders as it was not a part of the normal quick build kits. However, they did have a retired RV9 with an intact rudder in the rafters collecting dust. They agreed to have shop personnel pull the rudder off, pack it and ship it overnight to the show. Without going into details, that is exactly what happened. This was around 11:00am on Thursday. The next day at 9:30am I received a phone call on my cell from the EAA Warehouse telling me there was a shipment from Vans with my name on it. It was the rudder. In less than 24 hours it had been flown half way across the country. As I will explain below it turns out I did not need the rudder, but it was great to know they went above and beyond to get me a rudder that I could use to fly home. Because I did not need the rudder, Vans told me to bring the box over to their tent and they would load it onto the truck when the show is over and take it back home.

Well, the reason I did not end up using the Vans rudder was due to help from another RV flyer. After talking with Vans I logged onto the VAF forum website. I logged in and posted that I had a damaged rudder at OSH and was in desperate need of a new rudder that could get me home from OSH. Butch Weckman from Hutchinson, MN saw my post and called my cell. He and a friend were leaving that evening after work to go to OSH. He happened to have a rudder that he could bring to the show that I could use. Further, it was complete and if I wished to do so, I could purchase it from him as a replacement. To make this already long story shorter, that is exactly what happened. Butch arrived at the repair station bright and early Friday morning. I arrived at 7:00am and commenced to removing my rudder. The rudder has three bolts holding it onto the vertical stabilizer and two bolts holding the rudder cables. They were quickly removed. I installed Butch?s rudder and in the span of approximately 2 hours we were ready to fly home. Mary had decided to ride home with friends from home via ground.

David 'SLASH' Figgins and his friend Phil had stayed with me to help with repairs (SLASH was able to get a brand new prop from Catto props so he had his repairs made also). So Friday morning, almost 24 hours to the minute from the incident, we were now taxiing to RWY 18R for takeoff. We pulled into a much shorter conga line and with a great deal of looking out of the corner of my eye behind me the two of us pulled onto the runway. I announced we were a flight of two. The pink shirt called clearance for our flight of two to take off. We departed straight out on 18R and once clear of OSH class D climbed to 10.5K for our flight home.

instruments%252520on%252520flight%252520home.jpg


We were headed to Paola, KS (K81) for our fuel stop and some great BBQ at We-Be-Smokin? BBQ. Which by the way, if anyone wants a nice day trip for some weekend you might think about flying up to We-Be-Smokin? BBQ for lunch. Great food right in the terminal building of the airport. So, the story finally comes to an end. I made it home just before 5:00pm Friday. Approximately 24 hours later than what was planned. The plane was finally tucked into the hangar after an eventful trip.

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So, we now have two art pieces to display on the hangar apartment wall. A flap from the Sun N' Fun 2011 tornado and a rudder from the Oshkosh 2015 SLASH incident.

So what is it the French say? "C'est La Vie!"

And courtesy of the infamous philosopher Spock:
"Live Long and Prosper!"

I shall endeavor to live by both. :D
 
So Friday morning, almost 24 hours to the minute from the incident, we were now taxiing to RWY 18R for takeoff. We pulled into a much shorter conga line and with a great deal of looking out of the corner of my eye behind me the two of us pulled onto the runway.

You allowed Slash to get behind you?

In return for this manifest gesture of trust and friendship, did he buy lunch? ;)
 
Wow. First off, a big pat on the back for everyone that helped Steve with his incident. RV people are the best!
2nd----here's to Vans for having components that are somewhat interchangeble. Can you imagine having to scratch build a rudder from a kit that wasnt at OSH?
Having the resources to make such repairs a long way from home is amazing to me. Just goes to show you that being prepared is worth the effort.
Tom
 
You allowed Slash to get behind you?

In return for this manifest gesture of trust and friendship, did he buy lunch? ;)
Yes, well, I figured there was no one on the planet that would be taxiing an airplane more carefully than Slash on that day.
 
So, I understand that Jerry Fischer has christened UK Figs with a new call sign "SLASH", which is perfect. How about a new avatar contest for Slash to help celebrate his "coming out"? Anybody got any ideas for a good one?Joe

Sliced%252520Plane.jpg


Maybe he didn't care for your paint color scheme?

concorderudder.jpg


Slash Strikes again!

rudder%252520damage4%2525207-23-2015.jpg
 
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