Tuesday, 4 February 2014

LAA Safety Spot reports on Twister tailplane failure.

Our LAA magazine has a 'Safety Spot' section - which highlights any issues.

This month the Twister takes centre stage.

The only part of the article I have omitted is Malcolm McBride's letter to us Twister owners - which I already published in an earlier post (so no need to repeat it here).

As you can see the cause has now been identified.

The plastic guide tube was touching the elevator tube (the manual clearly states that it must go underneath the plastic bearing - and not touch the elevator tube).

Over time the movement of the elevator tube has worn through the plastic guide tube (and indeed was wearing into the securing wire itself).

This is what allowed the securing wire to pass outside of the plastic guide tube and over the spigot. Thereby not securing the tailplane to the fuselage.

Glad to hear that the pilot was able to walk away from this one.

The black arrow in Malcom's article (2nd page - middle picture) is not pointing in the right place so I have added a red arrow to show where the plastic guide tube is touching the elevator tube.

Click on the images for a much bigger view.







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