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Article about my 1-26 for the VSA newsletter
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Schweizer 1-26 Restoration progress.
By: Todd Schultz
Lancaster, CA
The work on #273 is progressing smoothly since I purchased it in May 2008. Initially I was looking for a glider
project that was in flying condition or wouldn't need too much restoration work to become airworthy again
and decided a 1-26 would be
something to look for after
Josh Knerr kept saying I
should get one. I came
across an ad on the SSA
website for #273 for sale out
in Silver Springs Nevada, just
east of Carson City. After a
brief conversation with the
owner I seemed convinced
that this was the glider I was
looking for but just to make
sure I flew up in the Bonanza
with my Dad and Josh to
take a look at it.
The life of a full time charter pilot doesn't give too much free time for long road trips so I drove up the next
afternoon after work with my Mom and we made sure everything was secure and hooked up to the Suburban
after fixing the trailer lights until dark. The trip home was uneventful.
My three week restoration idea has turned into a two year job so far. The fabric was in decent shape until it
all ended up on the garage floor. The skid had a big crack down the center and the wood stringers in the
fuselage were warped so those were the
first things. Stripped the whole cockpit
and fuselage down to bare metal and
painted everything green chromate. I
reinforced the top part of the nose
behind the instrument panel with
fiberglass laid over plastic tubes to give it
shape and a place to attach capacity
bottles.
That chromate looks great and I couldn't bring
myself to paint the whole fuselage a different
color so I just did the cockpit with high gloss grey
epoxy. The instrument panel is still the same as
when I got it. I plan to update the panel
eventually.
At the time of writing this, the fuselage and tail
feathers are complete and ready for silver poly
spray. The wings are ready for chromate after
another day of detail cleaning. The factory
trailing edges had a splice in the middle and were
a little bent up. I found new trailing edge stock and am working on that now also.
The plastic box around the tire was beat up and had been repaired a few times before so it didn't look all that
great. I made a foam and fiberglass mold from the old part and then made a new part from it. I may need to
practice composite work a little bit more but it should work just fine.
The fairing around the vertical fin to the
fuselage was in bad shape too. I fabricated a
new part from aluminum with rudder cable
exit holes. The goal of this project is to never
have to restore it a second time.
I should have everything painted in silver and ready to fly in the next few weeks.
As far as I can tell from the log books,
#273 was based in the Phoenix area for most of its life and was used by the SCSA for awhile in the late '90s in
California City. Then it went back to Phoenix for a few years and then to Silver Springs where it sat on the
trailer in a shed for the next few years. I'd like to find more history of this glider if anyone has it. The logbooks
are not detailed about anything before 1980.
The horizontal stabilizer covered on the bottom.
Wings ready for paint.
New trailing edges.
Cleaning around every rivet takes forever.
The new wheel well.
Just before covering the rudder.
First covering job.
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