Dumbest airplane builders

[pierre smith]

Another thread got me thinking about an unbelievable story an A@P friend told me. This ambitious builder built a Sport biplane (Pitts or Skybolt) and when the DAR was almost through with the final inspection, the silver painted tubing of the fuselage kept looking somehow different to him. He asked if he could scrape away a little paint and the builder agreed. The tubing was still shiny underneath and really puzzled the DAR. When he asked what sort of tubing it was, the guy went and found a short piece and said that this is some of it.
It turned out to be thin-walled galvanized tubing that electrical wire goes through!! The ENTIRE fuselage was carefully welded out of this stuff!! Needless to say, it never flew (unless he flew illegally).
Pierre

[rv9aviator]

I used to fly ultralights and Team products which are wood and fabric. All the wood structures are put together with T-88 Epoxy glue or equivalent. One fellow decided to save some money and built the whole plane using Gorilla Glue. Everything was fine and he even flew the plane. After it sat outside for a while it self destructed into a pile of kindling. He must have spent at least a couple of years building this plane and he saved maybe $100.00.

[avaviat]

I'm not saying I'd use PU glue, but the stuff is very strong. If you make a test block by gluing two chunks of oak together, and then bend/hammer it to destruction, the oak will break before the glue. If someone had an epoxy sensitivity PU would be a good choice. Resorcinol would be a better choice. PU is not waterproof and that means "furniture only" to me...but it isn't actually a bad glue. Unless it was left outside in rain/dew all the time a PU-glued airframe would last many years. Leave it in the wet too long and you'd have firewood.


My only "non crunchy" story is of a local builder who is adding every conceivable bell and whistle to his plane. Dome lights peeking through the headliner, N-way adjustable seats, noise makers rigged to the seven-button joystick so it can make machine gun sounds...all mounted by welding 4130 plates to his fuse. many pounds, and years (he's on yr. 9 IIRC), added to the build...and he brags about how he is "building lite."

[tinman]

When I was a kid, I decided that it would be a great idea to build a hang glider. My best friend and I went back into the woods and cut down a few saplings and bound them together in what we thought to be the shape of a glider. We went door to door in the neighborhood looking for bed sheets that could be sewn together to make the wing. The project took a total of two days from conception to first flight which was an eternity in kid?s time. The glider was so heavy that I couldn?t lift it up over my head. We found a stronger test pilot who was willing to launch this contraption off of our roof. (We were sea-level folks?) My test pilot didn?t listen to my instructions about having to get her up to flying speed before hitting the edge and making the final leap. He stepped up to the edge and lawn-darted. He was not hurt in the first and final flight of my aircraft, but the glider was demolished. As teens, we built a sailing catamaran from Popular Science plans with our parent?s blessing?I guess they thought that we were less likely to get hurt sailing on the lake. Keep in mind that this occurred back in the 70?s before it was popular to sue your neighbors for things like this.