Took off the fabric from the ailerons, not too much hard work. The basic wood structure is in remarkably good condition, no delamination, everything in as new condition except for a bit of minor wood repair.

This shows the trailing edge on one of the ailerons where some damage was repaired in a kinda haphazard way. We’ll fix this by cutting out this section, epoxying a backing plate and scarfing in the top strip. We have just enough of that 1 mm plywood for the job (bless you St. Peter!).

At the aileron tip there’s a mysterious looking plug, most likely attached via an inserted backing strip. The dark brown colouring appears to be due to some type of filler which seems to have been applied over a crack. We’ll cut a smaller hole into that circular plug and inspect the inside of the structure to see what’s going on.

Because of the state of the hinge fittings removed earlier and these defects, we decided that we want to conduct a thorough inspection of the wings since that would be a requirement for the 10 year survey.. To this end I’ve asked the Oratex agent to tell the factory in Germany to hold the shipment of our order for the aileron covers, as we will be adding the fabric for the wings so that we don’t have to double up on the not insignificant freight and handling costs.

It appears we would need about 20 m of 1.9 m wide fabric to cover the entire wings. I went back to the Bocian technical manual and recalled that the original design only calls for covering the trailing edge between root and aileron cut-out, which would only need about 8 m. But on the other hand, that would mean the rest of the wings would need to be painted, so we’ll have to think about this option. I suspect we’ll go with all fabic, last but not least because of the aesthetic conflict with Plan B.

Regarding restoration of the hinge fittings, we decided to get them grit-blasted and powder coated, together with all the other steel fittings and components from other sections of the aircraft. We’ll have to think about how to guarantee that none of the items get lost or damaged by the contractor – sure would be a bummer if e.g. one of the hinges went AWOL.