Yep. Another cartwheel... Last Friday was a southern wind. Very unusual for my area. I was flying at my club,
where I had never flown with a strong southern wind before. Final approach is challenging in these conditions.
You can choose turning to final over some powerlines and dive down, over some trees and a
cafe and dive down, or go fancy and do the down-wind leg real low, forget the cross wind
leg and turn straight into final.

I decided to go the fancy-shmancy way. Usually a sure way to get myself burned, but I felt
(over)confident after a relaxing 40 minute flight and thought the excitement would do me good. Ha!

It started of fine. I turned downwind at about 15 meters altitude, managed to keep speed real low,
lost about 5 meters altitude, and started a gentle left turn with rudder. Ailerons in opposite
direction, creating a sort of controlled sideslipping turn. Worked beautifully. Half way into the
slow-slow turn I suddenly noticed what I had conveniently forgotten. The side of the field has
0.5 meter high wooden poles every 25 meters.
I hit a pole about mid-wing followed by a slow-motion cartwheel.

No damage on the leading edge, all servos are fine. Only damage; one wingdowel broken,
and my ego (it happened in front of the cafe's terrace). Both repairable.

I decided that, if already I had to repair the LE dowels, I’d totally re-do them the way I
saw Tony Oliver’s version, but with a small twist.

To start, I got a piece of brass tubing and 5mm doweling. The doweling fits very very snug inside
the brass tube. I cut two 40mm long pieces brass and two 3mm pieces of dowel, and epoxied the
dowel inside the brass (as stopper).

In order to take out the remaining piece of broken dowel that was still stuck in the wing,
I had to cut out the top of the balsa covering.

While there, I also enlarged the opening to fit the brass tubing.

Making sure I had it straight, I drilled into the wing, to house the 40mm piece of brass.

Both brass pieces in place, with epoxy inside the drilled out wing.

I mixed some 30 minute epoxy with Soda Bicarbonate (instead of microballoons), and let it
fill up the little space around the brass for a snug fit.

While that was curing I started on the afore mentioned twist.
Originally 4mm dowels are used as wing dowels. I am using now 5mm dowels. The idea is to sand
down the part of the dowel that sticks out of the wing. The sharp edges of the brass tubing,
combined with the reduction from 5 to 4mm should cause the dowel to make a clean brake at hard landings.
At least, that’s the idea…

To get an even reduction to 4mm I placed a piece of doweling in my hand drill. To protect the wood
I first slid the dowel into a piece of the brass tubing. Run the drill, while pushing the dowel
against a sanding block. Done!

Once the epoxy had cured I sanded it down, and used some light weight spackle to fill the uneven
bits and blobs. The brass tubing was filed down to fit the LE contours. After that I trial fitted
the dowels and sanded them to the correct length.

Re-covered with oracover. Done! Ready for the next cartwheel.