Horizontal Stab Beefup?

Dave Clark · Post by **Dave Clark** » Mon Aug 25, 2003 11:42 am

A nieghbor just had his annual done on his 150 where the IA installed a Cessna beef up mod to the horizontal stabilized because it would oil can with mild up and down loads by hand testing. It sounded to me like it was a service bullitin not an AD and consisted of a spar doubler. Does anyone know about this and if it applies to our round tails?

Post by **GAHorn** » Mon Aug 25, 2003 9:01 pm

Nose-wheel airplanes are frequently moved about the ramp by numb-skulls without tow-bars. Numbskull usually sits on the horizontal to lift the nose-wheel off the ground and then he manuevers the airplane around to where he wants it. This results in broken nose-ribs and broken spars in the horizontal. The Cessna structural repair section of the maintenance manual provides for a "splice" for broken spars, and I suspect this is what was done to the 150. It does not normally occur to a 170, although if the spar were broken in a 170's horizontal a similar repair would likely apply.
170's ARE sometimes injured when someone pushes the vertical stabilizer's forward fairing sideways when manuevering the tail around. This breaks a bracket under the dorsal fin, and should not be done. Push on the fuselage side instead, and NOT on tailfeathers.

N170BP · Post by **N170BP** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 4:49 am

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, push on the fuselage sides
right where the bulkhead is behind the skin (just aft of where the
BAS pull handles would be if one had enough foresight to install
them!).

Bela P. Havasreti
'54 C-170B N170BP

Dave Clark · Post by **Dave Clark** » Tue Aug 26, 2003 2:11 pm

Thanks fellows but I knew these things. Plus I have the BAS handles. It didn't sound like his stab had anything broken but that there is a Cessna program to supply beef up kits. I guess I'll have to do further research on this end.