Plane Fixer
26th January 2016, 12:12 PM
I was asked to go to Lubango (Angola) as a Twotter had hit a tree on takeoff from a village strip. They continued 1hour 20 minute flight with 10 passengers so we assumed the damage was not too bad.
I took some sheetmetal, drill, some pop rivets and a few rolls of heavy duct tape, and with the senior pilot we were going to fly it back to Luanda after my repair.
When I looked at the damaged wing I was amazed that the damaged part did not break as the main spar caps top and bottom were severed and the upper skin was torn for two thirds of the chord.
The wing was removed from the aircraft and put in a Russian AN12 freighter and flown back to our hangar in Luanda for repair.
The pilot simply lost control of the aircraft on take off due simply that they were taught to use the steering tiller instead of using power and rudder.
He tried to blame many factors, including nose wheel shimmy, and trying to avoid a hole in the runway. This was disproved by walking the entire takeoff roll. The nosewheel shimmy was also eliminated by high speed taxi to the point of lift off with full nose down trim, neutral trim and full nose up trim and bouncing the nose wheel on and off during all of this. No shimmy and the captain lost his command.
I took some sheetmetal, drill, some pop rivets and a few rolls of heavy duct tape, and with the senior pilot we were going to fly it back to Luanda after my repair.
When I looked at the damaged wing I was amazed that the damaged part did not break as the main spar caps top and bottom were severed and the upper skin was torn for two thirds of the chord.
The wing was removed from the aircraft and put in a Russian AN12 freighter and flown back to our hangar in Luanda for repair.
The pilot simply lost control of the aircraft on take off due simply that they were taught to use the steering tiller instead of using power and rudder.
He tried to blame many factors, including nose wheel shimmy, and trying to avoid a hole in the runway. This was disproved by walking the entire takeoff roll. The nosewheel shimmy was also eliminated by high speed taxi to the point of lift off with full nose down trim, neutral trim and full nose up trim and bouncing the nose wheel on and off during all of this. No shimmy and the captain lost his command.