Originally Posted by
Big Pistons Forever
The Canadian Air Cadets use the SW 2-33. A rag and tube fuselage with a simple all aluminum wing. Simple to make and maintain with enough performance to teach the basics of gliding. That is what an Air Cadet program needs, not some expensive fragile glass high performance soaring machine.
There is nothing fragile (or frankly high performance) about the Viking. They are very sturdy aircraft. It is only a mismanagement of ongoing maintenance which has resulted in this perception of composite aircraft being ‘complex’ or ‘fragile’. There is - and has been for decades - a wealth of knowledge in the UK in repairing and maintaining composite sailplanes, which as far as the Air Cadets are concerned, has been all but completely ignored in favour of ill-suited and ill-informed DA oversight.