Jan de Jong wrote:
> From appearance the following pieces seem to be made of a similar type
> of aluminium:
> OR1, CS01, CS02, CS03, CS07, LG08, LG02, maybe a few more.
> By my guess the type of aluminium is quite corrosion resistant.
I bought my kit unstarted from someone who has had it around for 5 years
or so. I have the kit already a year, this winter practially all of the
aluminium was already assembled, and kept together with the airplane in
my unheated shed with leaking roof. There is a little bit of surface
rust on the landing gear legs (tri-gear) but the aluminium shows no
signs of corrosion at all. Keep in mind that the aluminium has already
been stored for more than 5 years without any protection. It doesn't
seem to corrode by itself. I live in the Netherlands just like you.
After reading some information, and realizing that, when you later
bonding the aluminium in place, you are actually bonding the
protection-layer to the airplane, rather than the bare aluminium (which
is not bad IF the treatment was applied properly, but this would become
another variable to depend your life on), I decided to keep the
aluminium untreated. Treatment always fails at the weakest points, where
bolts go through, and if you really want to make the airplane corrosion
proof, you have to treat every single nut, washer and bolt, hinge, etc.
and keep an eye at all moving parts where the treatment will wear away
(like the inside of the hinges). Also, part of the aluminium was already
installed by the factory (the inboard flap attachment plate for
instance), and it doesn't make sense to have some critical parts
unprotected and going great lengths to protect a few others.
Instead of all this, I plan on keeping the Europa at home. I will build
a small insulated hangar, and install some demoistering device. I also
thought about installing a few resistors at strategical points in the
fuselage and wings, and keep these powered during storage so the small
amount of heat will direct moisure away, but given the fact that I found
no signs of corrosion even after this winters very bad storage, I
skipped this idea.
I'm not a corrosion expert, just my 2 cents.
--
Frans Veldman
|