By Mark Miller

As we all know, Brendan had some issues with the two Pike Superiors in our family. I had a Green and orange zebra Pike that he liked a lot. He got a good deal on a white one from Jeffery Walters and decided to buy it. Due to some unexplained problem he crashed my zebra Pike when it had no control on launch. The right tip panel was toast but the rest was unscathed.

Last Wednesday he crashed his white one when he hooked his chair when putting tension on the winch line. The plane was very much broken. The good part of this bad experience is that one of the unbroken pieces of his Pike was the very end part of the right tip. I look at it and see the piece needed to fix my zebra Pike. Here are some photos of what we did to put it all back together.

Time. 15 minutes after Brendan gets home from the field and Dad measures things and gets out the table saw. Cut the tip off of the donor wing and make a foam filler and put unicarbon on the top and bottom to reinforce the seam. Epoxy all of the parts together and clamp over night.

The next day we sand a depression over the seam and fill it with unicarbon and a few layers of 2 oz. glass cloth. Sand level and coat with filler. Sand smooth and spray with primer. Sand smooth. We are now ready to paint. I’m not sure if we will do that now or fly the Gateway in primer and make it pretty later.

Mark and Brendan Miller