The wings of a Link Trainer to the Tuesday Club to be covered

Suomeksi

The collection of the Karelian Aviation Museum includes a Link Trainer (LT-1). This Link Trainer has last been in use at Immola. The retired link Trainer was collected in a trailer to the Karelian Aviation Museum to Lappeenranta on June 6th, 2004.

Photos by Kimmo Marttinen.

This Link Trainer has wooden wings with ailerons. The fabric covering of the wings is badly torn. On top of that the left aileron is missing. The wings are structurally more or less intact, so for that part there isn’t much to repair.

Photos by Ari Aho.

The chairman of the Karelian Aviation Museum, Mr Kimmo Marttinen, turned to the Tuesday Club, whether the Tuesday Club could cover anew the LT-1 wings. The Club has several restoration projects active, but we answered in the affirmative because the wings are tiny, and their covering anew won’t take much room. The LT-1 wings were brought from Lappeenranta to the Finnish Aviation Museum at the beginning of November.

Photo by Ari Aho.

Photo by Kimmo Marttinen.

At the Aviation Museum we examined more closely the Link Trainer’s fabric covered wings. There were damages on the covering of the upper surface of both the wings, but they could be patched. The covering of the underside of both the wings, instead, was badly damaged. However, we decided to cover both wings anew, because the end result wouldn’t be tidy, if it consisted of both old patched and new fabric covered surfaces.

Before we started to dismantle the covering, the right-hand wing’s aileron was taken off. Even though the covering was intact, it was dismantled. The reason for this being that we’ll have to build the lacking aileron for the left-hand wing, and for that we needed the structure of the right-hand aileron as a model. The structure of the aileron for building the lacking one can’t be seen without taking off the covering from the aileron.

When dismantling the covering fabric from Link Trainer’s wings, our attention was drawn to the thickness of the covering fabric.  At the same time it was noticed that where there was damage in the fabric, silver and dark blue paint appeared from under the beige paint. The Link Trainer’s wings have originally, or before the last coat of paint, been blue on the upper surfaces and silver on the undersurfaces.

The covering fabric also told us that the wing had been covered with fabric consisting of several pieces sewn to each other. While covering the wing the stitches have been hidden with strips of fabric with zig-zag edges put into place with tightening lacquer to protect the seams.

When scrutinizing the wings stripped of the fabric, we noticed that the stem of the left-hand wing differed in form from that of the right- hand wing. Could it be that the entrance to the Link Trainer is on the left-hand side, therefore “a sidestep” has been made to the wing stem to facilitate entering the Trainer cockpit. We also noticed that the gluing seam in the wing structure had opened in places. These seams must be glued before commencing the covering.

The airframe of the wing and aileron are very well and meticulously done, and also very typical wing structure with spars and ribs. Actually one wonders why the wing has been made so complete, because the Link Trainer’s wings weren’t meant to be airworthy. It would have been easier to construct the wings, if the wing had been made of plate, cut into wing form, as is the case in some Link Trainers.

Before we get to covering the Link Trainer’s wings, we must find a suitable fabric. In this case an ordinary white cotton fabric will do, as long as it has good tightening qualities. So we bought two different kinds of cotton fabric from Eurokangas for testing the tightening qualities (Bed sheet fabric 150 and Satin), whose tightening qualities we now will test with nitro cellulose lacquer. Hopefully one of them will meet our requirements in covering the Link Trainer’s wings.

Photos by Lassi Karivalo except if otherwise mentioned.

Translation by Matti Liuskallio.