Recent content by aalexander

I'm toying with the idea of replacing the fuses and switches in my ECA with switch style breakers. Would doing this require a field approval? How are the new Citabrias configured?

I'm in the process of recovering my ECA. Upon stripping the fabric off the wings, I discovered that in a previous recover the fabric on one wing had been attatched with steel pop-rivets. WHy, I don't know, but the steel rivets a a real pain to drill out without damaging the hole in the rib...

On another forum, I saw somone making the comment that aluminum spar champs have a significantly lower useful load. I'm kind of scratching my head here, is there really a substantial weight difference between wood spars and the milman aluminum replacement spars? Doesn't seem like it would...

Hi, My question stems from a discussion on another forum. One person made the statement that the Super Decathalon POH says that in the event of loss of propeller control, the prop defaults to a low RPM position. I'ts my understanding that most props installed on recip singles will go to...

Well, I opened up my other wing yesterday. It was an afternoon of surprises, none of them good. There is a single line in the airframe logbook which says "repaired left wing as per w/o # XXXXXXX" and has the stamp of a now defunct repair station. Amazing what can be concealed in such a...

I started peeling fabric off of my wings (1972 7ECA) and i was a bit surprised to discover that the rear spar had 2 scarf joints in it. It appears that it came that way from the factory. There is no record of a repair to the spar (there was some damage to the wing but the log entry only...

I'm in the proceess of recovering my 7ECA, 1974, original fabric. I'm stripping fabric off the control surfaces at the moment and I'm wondering what is a good solvent for softening the cememt used to cement the fabric to the structure. I've tried MEK and that doesn't seem to work very well...