Unfortunately, one of the truths in this hobby is that if you don't want to crash, don't fly. What comes up will ultimately come down, and it's only the way in which your model comes down that determines how happy you are at the end of the day. Since crashing can be discouraging, I see many pilots trash models that could be repaired to fly again. But let's face it...it takes a lot of damage to make it MORE time consuming to rebuild than repair.
The following photos are intended to show how some common repair techniques that can be used to repair built-up style models, which still represent the majority of scratch-built projects in this hobby. The model in the photos is a 1:4 scale Minimoa, a 1930's vintage German sailplane built (roughly) to the Chris Williams plan.
I came into possession of the wounded beast following a mishap during a winch launch. Since I was actually in the process of building one of these from scratch from the same plan, I thought that this would be a good way to get some stick time before flying my own version.
This model has had quite an interesting past as well, which makes its restoration even more appealing. It was originally built by a power-flyer, and had was flown with an O.S. 120 engine in a power-pod above the wing (sacrilige!). After hanging from the rafters of a local hobby shop for a number of years, it was purchased by a sailplane pilot in our club here in Calgary, and was flown on a couple of occassions prior to "the incident". The model came to be in the state you see below after a winch mishap caused the glider to auger in cartwheel-style, and sat in the fellows basement for about a year.
I hope to have it flying again in the spring.
