It never stops. Fosa ballast tube repairs

Even though I do everything that is possible to make sure there is no need for me to do building, repairing or maintenance, something always seems to go wrong!

I couldn't believe it when on Monday evening I was putting the fuz ballast in and the back of the ballast tube gave way. The ballast just went straight through the back.

I dropped a mail to Baudis, got a reply but wasn't really any use. I gave Rob a call but again completely useless.

After alot of pontificating about how I was going to fix this without removing the ballast tube I came up with the following method.

I cut a piece of foam that I could squeeze down the tube. I marked a steel rod so I was a able to ensure I would push the foam far enough but not too far. I wanted to create a foam bung as a base for epoxy to create a new solid end

I connected some tubing to a syringe. I had put the tubing in the ballast tube and marked it so I knew when the end of the tube would be resting against the foam bung

The fuselage taped to a dining room chair. Gravity would play an important part in this repair. 
I mixed up a load of epoxy, filled the syringe with the epoxy and with the tubing balanced on the foam bung , fired it in












I left this overnight. The following day I rammed a steel bar down the tube and miraculously my repair seems to have worked. The end of the ballast tube now has avery solid epoxy bung in the end . Brilliant.


Martin