Increased Gross Weight - Wood Spar Decathlons

[BB57]

There ought to be some common sense in that AD. The Decathlon spars are apparently way more robust than the Citabria. Looking at every square inch of all four surfaces is a joke - which is why Rainbow sells a special skylight for the front spar outboard of the strut. Seems to me the AD would be a 30 minute deal if we inspected the critical areas and just generally looked elsewhere, like we do on early Cubs.

Yeah, Ed - these are good wings, and if your tanks pre-date the 1990s you should have very few problems. There are a few minor things in there that can break if you like violent aero - snap rolls etc - but they won't bring you out of the sky.

The owner of the shop I got my pre-buy done at grew up working in a shop that serviced mostly Stearmans and crop dusters. He said he had seen wood spars take massive damage and not fail completely.

I don't know much about the AD process but I assume the only counterbalance to the FAA would be the manufacturer. Since Bellanca is defunct and ACA would be happy to see wood wings go extinct, the FAA had no incentive to be reasonable. I'm sure they don't give a damn what some type club thinks.

I've dealt with federal agencies enough to know the only way to get their attention is to have a pissed off congressman on your side. If that congressman is on the committee that controls their funding, you bet they will tread carefully.

The FAA went way over the top with the wing spar AD. As far as I can determine what prompted the original service letter was the failure of wings spars on two 8GCBC aircraft. Both of these aircraft had damage histories due to wing tip strikes or over turn events. The damage was located in the root of the spar and/or at each end of the spar doubler plates. The original service letter reflected that, but by the time all was said and done, the AD required an inspection of the entire spar at each annual inspection for all 7 and 8 series aircraft with 85 hp or more, regardless of a lack of any damage history or age of the spars in the aircraft.

I spent 12 years as a fed (not the FAA) , who had been aggressively recruited to fix a broken program. That program improvement effort lasted about 18 months until they figured out that improving the program would mean actually changing how they do things, listening to field staff and program experts, and supplanting at least some of the attorneys/bureaucrats in charge with field staff and program experts. That ended that.

The remaining 10 years consisted mostly of beating my head against the wall trying to inject sanity and practical application into federal reviews, sub regulatory guidance and new or revised regulations. Common sense was not in fashion and taking very narrow, conservative positions to protect careers was the order of the day. The end result was unnecessary regulatory burden and expense, while program performance tanked.

I'm confident the FAA doesn't operate much differently when it comes to their operations inside the beltway. The extent to which the local FSDOs can ward off that excessive oversight probably depends on the staff in charge at any given FSDO and how they prioritize common sense over managing their careers.

 

[aftCG]

The owner of the shop I got my pre-buy done at grew up working in a shop that serviced mostly Stearmans and crop dusters. He said he had seen wood spars take massive damage and not fail completely.

I don't know much about the AD process but I assume the only counterbalance to the FAA would be the manufacturer. Since Bellanca is defunct and ACA would be happy to see wood wings go extinct, the FAA had no incentive to be reasonable. I'm sure they don't give a damn what some type club thinks.

I dropped in on Rainbow Ron a year or two ago. I think I was hoping to score an early model cowl to replace mine, but the one he had wasn't an improvement. I hope he never dies because his inventory system is all in his head

Ron took the time to show me around the shop and as we worked our way back to the front door he showed me some spar pieces. One was horribly fractured and the owner had bought/flown it that way for some time without knowing. I got to see samples with barely visible examples of compression failures that ground these aircraft, and some sections showing his type of doubler (a huge improvement over the original from this engineer's point of view).

I'm sure I've made some comments that seem anti ACA on these pages, but since I think they've been sued over wood spar wings (which they've never produced a single example of), I can understand how they'd like them to go away. That said, if I needed to rebuild my wings I would go straight to Ron for replacements.

 

[Big Ed]

If you know the accident history of your wood spar, you can assess the risk of spar fracture. Unfortunately, when an aircraft changes ownership, the only reliable record of that history is the airframe log. If you groundloop and drag a tip, or bang the leading edge into a hangar, the temptation must be overwhelming to clean up the cosmetic damage and not record it.

That's the situation I am in now. My new-to-me 8KCAB had a prop strike in 2006. The prop was repaired and the engine IRAN'd and appropriately logged. There is nothing in the logs about wingtip damage. But who knows? Despite the spar having been inspected 12 times since then, I still find myself wondering how sure I can be.

The wing fabric is in good shape. However, depending on cash balance and how my luck with the fuselage cover and engine go, I might get the wings restored with a new wood spar in the next year or two. That way if I fly it for 20 years, I'll be confident in what I am flying on. At that point, to me a wood spar is just as safe as a metal spar because I will have 100% confidence that there are no unknown accidents in the lifetime history of that spar.

Wish I had someone like Rainbow Ron in my neck of the woods.

 

[aftCG]

It's not just previous owners, but who flies the plane after you get it. A plane that is a rental or club plane is probably at the highest risk of someone having an incident and electing not to tell anyone, especially if they don't understand the history of wing contact in the 7and 8 series planes.

Say someone has an excursion into the weeds, might have touched a wing tip briefly and then looks it over later to see a slight scuff and maybe some grass stains. Whew, that was a close one!

I've preflighted flight school planes and seen it before. A C182 RG with 1/4 missing off the prop tips, another with bent flap tracks (overspeed). Huh, not a word in the dispatch book.

 

[Big Ed]

Agreed. In my particular situation though, it will just be me flying it.

 

[Bartman]

The owner of the shop I got my pre-buy done at grew up working in a shop that serviced mostly Stearmans and crop dusters. He said he had seen wood spars take massive damage and not fail completely.

I don't know much about the AD process but I assume the only counterbalance to the FAA would be the manufacturer. Since Bellanca is defunct and ACA would be happy to see wood wings go extinct, the FAA had no incentive to be reasonable. I'm sure they don't give a damn what some type club thinks.

I've dealt with federal agencies enough to know the only way to get their attention is to have a pissed off congressman on your side. If that congressman is on the committee that controls their funding, you bet they will tread carefully.

It was explained to me that the owners between Bellanca and ACA were happy to see the wing spar AD go through because they had metal spar wings and wanted to sell a lot of them. So it's possible that ACA picked up where these other gentlemen left off but that the die was basically cast before ACA began making airplanes again.

 

[Goodyear]

So is there an AD on every wood spar wing for all certified aircraft? Because, if not, there is no logical reason to require inspection just for citabria/scout. Scout is not certified for aerobatics although it has a restricted category rating increasing gross weight by 450 lbs.

 

[Bob Turner]

You want logic? Read the AD - it is lacking any sense of logic. I can show you a Bend-A-Light. What a joke!
No - only higher horsepower Champs have the annual inspection - the lower horsepower it is one time only. I know of no other wood spar aircraft with such a requirement.

 

[BB57]

It was explained to me that the owners between Bellanca and ACA were happy to see the wing spar AD go through because they had metal spar wings and wanted to sell a lot of them. So it's possible that ACA picked up where these other gentlemen left off but that the die was basically cast before ACA began making airplanes again.

The timing is wrong for that to be the case.

Bellanca acquired the 7 and 8 series designs from Champion Aircraft Corp, in 1970. Bellanca stopped production in 1980 and was liquidated in 1982. The assets passed through various holding companies with the Champion Aircraft Company (not related to the Champion Aircraft Corp) producing a small number of 7GCBC aircraft in 1985-86. ACA acquired the assets and TC in 1989 and started producing aircraft with metal spar wings in 1990.

However, the wing spar issue wasn't as issue at all until 1994, five years after ACA had acquired the TC and four years after they had begun making 7 and 8 series aircraft, all with metal spar wings. ACA also had no liability for the aircraft produced by Champion Aircraft Corp, Bellanca or American Champion Company and none of those previous companies had any involvement with the wing spar issues that were not raised until 1994.

ACAC issued Service Letter 406 on March 28, 1994. The FAA followed up four years later with AD 98-05-04 with an effective date of April 17, 1998 for all 8GCBC aircraft (estimated at 261 affected aircraft) "based on in-flight wing structural failure on one of the affected airplanes that was in compliance with the one-time inspection requirement of AD 87-18-09, plus 4 other ACAC Model 8GCBC accidents and 11 service difficulty reports (SDR's) of compression cracked spars."

AD 98-05-04 essentially made he one time inspection required in AD 87-18-09 a repetitive requirement during annual inspection for 8GCBC aircraft.

However, as noted in AD 98-05-04, "the service letter applies to all ACAC 7 and 8 series airplanes, whereas the AD applies only to ACAC Model 8GCBC airplanes. The FAA is currently considering additional rulemaking action on the airplane models other than the Model 8GCBC airplanes."
The FAA did just that with AD 2000-25-02 which "retains the actions of AD 98-05-04 for the ACAC Model 8GCBC airplanes; extends the actions to all ACAC 7, 8, and 11 series airplanes". (With some exceptions where the spar inspection was still a one time inspection on aircraft with 85 hp or less.)

----

In short, it wasn't an issue until 1994, when ACA owned the TC. ACA was also clearly driving the bus with service letter requirements (applied to aircraft for which they had no liability) that were far broader in scope than the AD adopted by the FAA. ACA literally put the FAA in a position of having to do another AD to broaden the scope to 7 and 11 series aircraft, where there had not been a single in flight spar failure.

It's also worth noting that the only cracks that were found at the time were in aircraft that had damage histories where a rip strike or over turn occured. At most, that called for a one time inspection, and a re-inspection only subsequent to any future incident involving a tip strike or over turn.

It sure looks like ACA saw it as a sales opportunity to market new metal spar wings for older aircraft.

 

[Bob Turner]

Thanks for that. Enlightening. Too bad Senator Inhofe doesn't have a Decathlon.

 

[Red Owl]

I wish I could be with you guys on this one.

You've forgotten the biggest threat to ACA - Tort. Of course they're all for periodic inspections and replacing all wings with metal. If someone dies because of wood spar failure you can bet ACA is going to be lucky to survive the resultant lawsuit. With the inspection requirement they have at least a chance of squeaking out of it.

And let's not forget reputation. If your product develops a reputation as "safety compromised" or a potentially deadly choice, your business is gone. Reality doesn't have anything to do with this - only public perception.

In short any company would be stupid NOT to back an effort to increase oversight on a product of theirs that has already seen failures. The nature and causes of those failures are quite entirely secondary to the fact.

That being said, given what I know of aviation and aviation people, I have to agree with them. I would not feel comfortable with a wood spar aircraft at this time. Inspections are swell and all, but faults can lie within the material and not be apparent from the exterior. We all know that our favoured type of aircraft has historically attracted pilots who prefer a casual attitude to regulation. The recent accident statistics posted on this forum show a clear issue with aerobatics by the people flying these types. Worse yet, you can bet that some idiot has done aerobatics in those that are not authorised for it - and probably very poorly if recent discussions here are any indicator. Even those intended for aerobatics have been "rode hard and put up wet" more than a time or two by now.

But the biggest factor for me is the failure mode. It appears sudden and complete structural failure is what this AD is attempting to prevent. It's apparently a possibility; not a likelihood but a possibility. Since structural failure of a major airframe component is a non-survivable incident, and has been shown to be possible and in fact to actually have occurred, I can't justify putting myself in a situation with that potential.

Yes the metal wings are stupid expensive, and dying is cheap, but personally If I can't afford the fix, it doesn't make dying any more acceptable. Airplanes are, have been and always will be ludicrously expensive. Sometimes paying a lot more is the cheap way out.

All that being said, I support the validity of y'all's viewpoints who disagree. We each need to set our own limits - no matter what the FAA would prefer we do. If you're comfortable, I'm happy for you. I do however encourage you to step outside yourself for a minute or two and just be certain that this decision is being made by your mind - and not your wallet. Most of my life "not being able to afford something" was a daily fact of life and I got used to that being a factor in decisions. Fortunately for a lot of folks, they have had to consider those factors less often. Sometimes it's a good thing to review our decisions from an outside perspective. Yes I know the wife is definitely an outside perspective, but I meant an entirely rational one. Emotion is and should be a factor in almost every human decision, but we need to guard against it being irrationally weighted.

But if you choose to fly with wood I wish you nothing but the best. I acknowledge that the vast majority of you will never have the first negative impact from that decision. And I wouldn't have it any other way. I just know me. You remember "L'il Abner"? The old cartoon? Well Joe Bltsflk is me. If something is going to happen, it's going to happen to me. So I'll just play it close to the vest on this one.

 

[aftCG]

Did you read the same statistics that I did? Big Ed's published numbers show zero occurrences of spar failures -wood or metal- due to them not handling rated load.

I have some questions/opinions on Ed's post but I need a real keyboard to do it. But like you said, everyone gets to make their own decisions

There are a number of wood spars that fail inspection every year. Keep the wing tips off the ground and those chances are slim.

 

[Bob Turner]

Compression cracks are caused by impact. These are the ones that kill you later. The AD is a joke -if you groundloop and hit a wing, or hit a fencepost with it, take the fabric off outboard of the lift strut and carefully inspect with a magnifying glass and high inensity LED flashlight - not a stupid Bend-A-Light and mirror. Pay attention to under those plywood plates - the top and bottom of the spar must be looked at.

I fly airplanes with wood spars all the time. Sometimes we get a wing scuffed - you bet I get out the borescope! But I continue to trust these things - wood is in a lot of ways better than metal.

We are not doing AD type inspections on Stearmans, Wacos, Cubs, or Rearwins. That Scout series of accidents should have been confined to that wing.

They are assuming that we do not report wing impact - yet each accident had a provable previous impact event.

 

[BB57]

I wish I could be with you guys on this one.

You've forgotten the biggest threat to ACA - Tort.

Yes and no. ACA's liability for older aircraft is greatly limited by the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994.

Since ACA didn't manufacture any of the previous aircraft produced by Champion Aircraft Company, Bellanca, or Champion Aircraft Corp, I don't believe they ever had any liability for those aircraft.

If ACA ever did have any liability, after 1994 that liability would have expired 18 years after the aircraft in question was manufactured. Given that Bellanca produced it's last aircraft in 1980, ACA liability would have ended in 1998, and from 1994 to 1998 ACA would have only been liable for the last 4 years of Bellanca produced 7 and 8 series aircraft. Champion Aircraft Company made a handful of 7GCBC aircraft in 1985-86, but any liability ACA may have ever had for those aircraft would have ended in 2004.

But here's the kicker. My 1967 Champion Aircraft Corp. produced 7KCAB got new ACA wings in 2007. GARA however is a rolling statute where the 18 year liability limit is reset when modified or replacement parts are installed. That means ACA is now liable for any manufacturing defects that cause an accident on my 54 year old aircraft and will continue to be liable until 2025.

Worse, it's not just major assemblies like wings, that provision in the law means ACA is liable if an aircraft contains manufacturer modifications or parts installed within the last 18 years. I suspect if I installed new ACA shims to install 8.50x6 tires, or order a set of those nifty detent ball pins for the front and rear seats to make removal and re-installation easier, ACA would be assuming the liability for my 1967 KCAB for another 18 years - to 2038.

On the other hand, if ACA were really concerned about liability for the fleet, they'd have been wise to spin off an entirely separate company to manufacture and sell parts for older aircraft to keep "ACA" parts out of older aircraft.

 

[Bob Turner]

Great analysis. Thanks!

 

[Big Ed]

Did you read the same statistics that I did? Big Ed's published numbers show zero occurrences of spar failures -wood or metal- due to them not handling rated load.

One caution on that statement ... I only posted data for the 8KCAB. I can't speak to the 7 series. However, Decathlons are typically flown harder with higher G loads, so I wouldn't be surprised if the same observation held true for the Citabria.

Has anyone accessed the Google spreadsheet I posted? Just wanted to confirm the sharing permissions are set correctly to let you all in.

IMO a more appropriate AD would be to mandate that any wing impact require the wing to be uncovered, inspected, and rebuilt. Couple that with a requirement for an IA to sign off on all wingtip and leading edge repairs, and make wingtips a serial numbered part so non-compliance can be detected.

 

[aftCG]

One caution on that statement ... I only posted data for the 8KCAB. I can't speak to the 7 series. However, Decathlons are typically flown harder with higher G loads, so I wouldn't be surprised if the same observation held true for the Citabria.

Has anyone accessed the Google spreadsheet I posted? Just wanted to confirm the sharing permissions are set correctly to let you all in.

IMO a more appropriate AD would be to mandate that any wing impact require the wing to be uncovered, inspected, and rebuilt. Couple that with a requirement for an IA to sign off on all wingtip and leading edge repairs, and make wingtips a serial numbered part so non-compliance can be detected.

I was able to access the spreadsheet, yes. I noticed that it was for series 8 aircraft which is fine since that's what you're buying. I attempted to use your link to make my own search but I was on my phone and screens don't play the same.
I'll respond with my blathering later after I've had a chance to try a search with my brand spanking new laptop.

 

[Red Owl]

Did you read the same statistics that I did? Big Ed's published numbers show zero occurrences of spar failures -wood or metal- due to them not handling rated load.

I have some questions/opinions on Ed's post but I need a real keyboard to do it. But like you said, everyone gets to make their own decisions

There are a number of wood spars that fail inspection every year. Keep the wing tips off the ground and those chances are slim.

Well thank you Aft. I was operating under that belief that there had been either two or three failures. Don't know where I got that, but drawing it from memory was one of the primary reasons for the above rant. My opinion still stands - spar failure - even potential spar failure - just makes me very uneasy. Uneasy is something I don't want in my aviation experience so perhaps I over react.

I should also mention in this scenario, that I may over react because I lost a friend ( and his 12 year old son) due to in flight spar failure about 20 years ago. It wasn't a Citabria or Champ but it sticks with you when it happens in your circle.

 

[Red Owl]

Yes and no. ACA's liability for older aircraft is greatly limited by the General Aviation Revitalization Act of 1994.

Thank you as well BB. I recall when that "act" was initiated so I should have known better. Again my personal loss due to spar failure may have influenced my response, but I still stand by it. The tort portion of the rant has been successfully refuted, but I still put my personal standard such that potential spar failure is an unacceptable risk for me. It's just too easy - if expensive - to avoid.

 

[Big Ed]

There were at least one, maybe two Decathlon fatalities in the 90's caused by failure of the spar strut attachment fitting due to a metallurgical fault.