Just curious Sven,
When the door departed, where did the separation take place. Was it
right at the hinge or did the bolts pull out of the holes. I have been
working on painting my doors and have been considering a fix for this
worry that a cozy builder used. He placed an inside secondary latch.
I'm not sure if this is legal because it cant open from the outside,
but it would solve any worries.
Jeff
A258
On Apr 5, 2005, at 11:57 AM, Sven den Boer wrote:
> <svendenboer@quicknet.nl>
>
> Saturday april 2nd, a nice day for a ride with beautiful weather.
> After take off, turning out of the circuit and towards the lake,
> having a
> passenger onboard, a ride over water is always a bit more smooth.
> After 15 minutes of flight a Whoosh sound was noted, I did not take
> long to
> realize that the pilot door had disappeared and had actually departed
> the
> aircraft. Was I glad being over water.
> The aircraft was undammaged and flying it was not different, except
> for a
> lot of noise due to the wind.
> After an uneventfull landing and a couple of days of thinking and
> investigating this mishap, it is most likely that the door did lock at
> the
> forward position, but the aft locking pin was outside the fuselage.
> Being a quite new Europa flyer I have been asking around and this
> seems to
> be a frequent observation.
> Now working on a solution, probabely a set of microswitches and a small
> light will do the trick, since it is almost impossible to verify by
> the eye.
>
> A thanks to Andy of Europa, who responded quickly and is trying to get
> the
> parts over even this week !!
>
> Cheers
>
> Sven den Boer
> A168 (Cabrio)
>
>
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