National Aeronca Association Bulletin Board

Hi All - Was wondering if anyone has experience with spars from Precision Aero Marine (http://www.precisionam.org/). There spars are considerably cheaper than wag aero's (less than $2000 for 4). Wanted some character reference for the quality of the work. Website says that everything is CNC'd so I'd imagine they're pretty good, but just wanted to see if anyone out there had used them and what their experience was. Thanks!

I was never able to contact them. Emailed off their website....no luck/no answer. Called on their phone number.....no luck/no answer. Not sure what the deal is. They are a Wisconsin company so when I decided to buy new spars for my L16 I thought I'd give them a try but l was never able to get an answer from them. This was about a year ago. I finally gave up and bought from Wag Aero. Their spars (Wag's) are pretty good and at least all the holes are in the right places with no plugs in the wrong places. I think their spars are made at a 'jobber' in southern Minnesota. The only problem I ran into on the spars was the taper on the very outer edge where the bow is attached was about 1/4 too wide and I had to sand a bit to make it fit the bow attach point which I thought was strange. Otherwise, everything fit Ok and of course, they are PMA 'approved' for whatever it's worth.

If you get through to the company, let us know what you think.

Also, if you're in California, Paul Aqaliotis off this site maybe able to help you out. I believe he's built wings and spars for Champs, etc.
Mike Berg

The reason I found them was a friend of mine saw them at oshkosh, he was talking to them about new fairchild wings. Anyway, he (my friend) was impressed with what he saw there. I've been conversing pretty freely with Bill at precision aero marine through email. I had asked him about 'owner supplied parts' vs PMA and if I'd need any other paperwork since the spars are not PMA, and completeness of their wing kit.

his response:

First of all on owner supplied parts. How it works is you will get a drawing and basically you will hire me to machine your spars. A PMA would be to much trouble for the set or two of these we do a year. We include all 4 spars plus the plates glued in place. The spars have 2 coats of spar varnish, I suggest sanding them and putting 1 coat of EV-400 Poly fiber varnish, or use them as they come, we use an alkyd varnish (MEK will eat into it) as described in 43.13b. there should be no drilling to do by you, although some models mount the tips different and they need to have some holes drilled at the tip, depends on your aircraft. Any major repair or alteration requires a 337, so a wing repair would need it. Reguardless if you use my spars or not. Our spars are 1 piece board with no joints in them, I do not know if Wags are the same.

I'd be interested to know why they never answered my emails or phone calls last year. I guess you could call these 'owner produced parts' (grey area ????) Some one with more experience in this area may chime in.
Thanks,
Mike

Mike,

I would guess that your spars were slightly oversize for the same reason windshields are oversize, it is easier to make it fit properly than if it were undersized!

I doubt that any of our airplanes have identical dimensions since these oldtimers were essentially hand built.

Good Point! .

Mike

An "Owner/Operator produced part" can me made by or commisioned by the owner/operator.

Basically, I can build it, or oversee someone else to build the part as long as I have techincal data for them to follow and it's going on my plane.

That's how Dawley Exhaust can build a brand new Hanlon-Wilson muffler for you; and all you have to do is ship them the bolt holes.

nkh

Has anyone bought and tried as set of spars from Precision Marine? Seems they would be about $600-700 less expensive for a set of four.
On the other hand, the Wag-Aero spars are PMA' ed which is worth something, I guess.

Mike Berg

Hi everyone - Just an update, I ended up going with pete plumb at woodwing specialty. I'm in northern california and he's in shafter CA, so he was able to cover the freight. He sent me some pictures of his work and it looks perfect. Some people I know around here have used him before and vouched for his work. The spars from precision were going to require more work once I got them with some expensive stitts spar varnish. In the end I think the price difference was going to be around $300-400, not much in the grand scheme of things.

I researched the 'owner supplied parts' issue and now realize (I believe) that as long as you (or someone) builds a part to the factory drawings you are good to go. Makes me very much less inclined to pay for PMA'd parts, especially when nearly all the drawings for these things are available from aeronca.com

good luck everyone!

K2 (a name would be nice)

Look here in the restoration section on this board: http://joea.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2333

A gent in San Diego is doing his spars from scratch and its all documented with excellent photos and descriptions. Not that hard if you have the proper tools and space.

Joe A

Thanks for the link Joe. Sorry for the silly name, it's something I've used for a while and it's easier to just keep using it than have a million different usernames to keep track of.

To belatedly introduce myself, my name is Matt Machen.
After reading that thread looks like you're right. If you had the space and the tools building up spars would be a great project. It would require a bit of tooling up for me. Maybe next time......wait, hopefully I'll never have these wings apart again in my lifetime! (knock on wood)

Merry Christmas Everyone!