[Blw2]

was it Oshkosh or Sun n Fun where the storm rolled through and there seemed to be lots of folks with damaged rudders.

Wondering what you all ended up doing? Able to fly them home and repair later? Were the airplanes stuck there for a while not flyable?

 

[dmattmul]

Osh 2022

Saturday night before the show began a line of thunderstorms passed through in the evening taking out at least 6 A model RV's rudders. I was there early Sunday morning and watched as owners would show up, look over their baby and almost cry. I would have. Fortunately, the Vans people had arrived, and sprang into action with the help of DR (I think I saw him there) along with the EAA either repaired or replaced multiple rudders, most all had gust locks. My A models was ok but after that I purchased another rudder lock (3D printed by RVPlasticParts) to provide one more tie to hold the rudder for the future. There probably have been more wind issues (SNF tornado a few years ago) but I was not at that one.

There's a write-up in earlier post documenting best practice gust locks.

 

[RVbySDI]

My rudder was damaged. I was able to tape the punctures on both side skins where the corners of the elevator punctured holes. The trailing edge split from the bottom up destroying 4 rivets (think of a zipper unzipping). I borrowed tools from the repair station, drilled out to -4 rivets and squeezed them with a hand squeezer. This allowed me to fly home.

While at OSH I posted about the damage and asked if anyone had a rudder I could purchase. Had a call in a couple of hours (thanks Andy). When I got home, drove to Andy’s hangar a few hours away, brought his rudder home, put it on that weekend (the last weekend of OSH). The following weekend I drove a few hours to the paint shop. 10 days later picked the rudder up and put it on the airplane. A little over two weeks from returning from OSH and it was back together as if nothing happened.