Gaffer Tape?
 

Photo taken on a recent domestic NZ Flight.

I assume there is a good explanation for taping up parts of passenger aircraft, but...


http://media.apn.co.nz/webcontent/im...deswipe014.jpg

As reported by sideswipe today http://www.nzherald.co.nz/column/sto...ectid=10501905


(And whatever happened to good old kiwi ingenuity and #9 fencing wire? :ok:)

They could have at least sprayed over it with a bit of grey primer so it wasn't so obvious to the punters. :E

Good ol Gaffa - airframe on a roll

Mahatma: the great Kiwi cure-all is #8 fencing wire, not #9.

And I've fixed many things with #8, although all of them were of the fence variety.

It is totally acceptable to use speed tape as a temporary repair on minor damage to non structural airframe components until replacement or permanent repairs can be facilitated. Another journalistic molehill transformed into a mountain.:yuk:

Sticky tape on parachutes
 

In the days when the dinosaurs roamed the earth (or maybe a little later than that) I was involved in skydiving, and went to England to see what all the noise was about.
Nylon parachute canopies were sometimes damaged during opening by friction, which resulted in little holes in the fabric. The proper repair involved more fabric, a sewing machine and lots of time. The English club I went to found a solution that just involved some sticky tape and a couple of minutes. Surprisingly it worked fine, but looked bad. Some canopies had lots of black sticky tape patches.
Fortunately, I had my own parachute.

yeah that's a totally acceptable looking temporary repair to a composite fairing.
There would no doubt be a requirement for it to be re-inspected regularly for integrity until it could be properly repaired.

Gaffa tape
 

Note that high-speed tape (instant airframe) and Gaffa tape are 2 totally different products, the latter having no place in aviation.

High-speed tape has far greater strength and rigidity, and is perfectly acceptable in the way it has been used here,

The area that is taped over with high speed tape is where the upper and lower fairings meet. It’s likely that the upper faring had been removed during overnight maintenance and insufficient time was available for the sealant (used for aerodynamic reasons) to cure before the aircraft was scheduled to re-enter service. It’s a perfectly normal maintenance practice to apply high speed tape over the top of a fillet seal that hasn’t completely cured, it is then usually removed by engineering when the aircraft terminates the next evening.

When I saw the headline- GAFFER TAPE and NEW ZooLAND mintioned, I thought this would be an interesting article............NOT

Bushy
Your right, back in the days of round canopies(goin back a while) always had some ripstop tape in the log book bag. At least I made the repairs the same colour as the canopy:)
Nothing wrong with 100mph Tape either

Frothy

Gaffer tape is too fukcing expensive to waste on aeroplanes!:8

Gaffer tape
 

:hmm:This looks like the same sort of tape that Airservices Australia is currently using to patch up the Australian ATC system. (This material is also known by the term "Goodwill of ATC staff") Note well that by the end of this year, they will have run out of all available supplies of such tape and the new Minister, CEO and Board will have to try to spin their way out of the ensuing PR disaster.

For myself, retirement will come soon enough...... but hopefully, not before the Minister devrees thant ASA offer an appropriate pay rise and maybe even retention bonus offers for the old farts approaching retirement, who constitute more than 20% of the total Aussie ATC staff numbers.

We'll see I guess.

I wish you all good luck.

you obviously never saw the amount of Bog splatted around the underside of the old Air NZ 7372s.

lestump,
how come this comment is not in the thread on AsA staffing levels?

A number of aviation people (myself included) must have emailed the author of the column to set her straight as there has been a follow-up.

The "Sideswipe" column in the New Zealand Herald is a light-hearted feature where people send in amusing or interesting "not-real-news" items.

The compiler, Ana, is quite happy to enter into correspondence when something isn't quite right.

Absolutely. Ana is an awesome chick, and this one is strictly for laughs.

In this case it just happens to be at our expense. Let's get over it.

Actually, I laughed my ass/arse off, knowing full well it was strictly for laughs.

And, it just shows Ana's integrity, that she doesn't get so pissed off that she throws her toys out of the cot and refuses to print a subsequent follow up/explanation when she gets called.

Now that's my kind of chick.:ok:

as they say..
 

As they say:
"If it's stuck and shouldn't be, use a hammer, If it's unstuck and should be stuck, use Gaffer"...

However, Slightly unnerving... tape holding an aircraft together, couldn't the tape have a possibility of freezing and unsticking during cruise?

... atleast Qantas would use staples ... :E

"Tape," as you call it, is used all the time.

No aircraft has been brought down because it was stuck together only with the stuff.

No aircraft has been involved in an incident because the tape came off in flight and ended up someplace it shouldn't have, or worse, compromised the structural integrity of the airframe.

BUT!!! There have been plenty of airframe failures not associated with tape in the long(ish) history of aviation, most of which ended up in a fatal accident.

Hmmm...I'd start worrying about whether the rivets and camlock fasteners are going to hold next time you go flying if I were you :E

No aeroplane has come apart in flight because tape was holding it together, but I do remember a 757 (I think in Peru) that was bought down because tape was left covering the static ports...

Not really the same thing as I don't think Boeing put static ports on fairings..