ARBN 070 931 645

12 January 2001

Those people with Drifters will be familiar with the contol suface hinge arrangement consisting of a stainless steel bracket rivetted to the rear spar of the wing/elevator/fin and a similar item rivetted to the contol surface itself. These have a right angled bend in them and a hole to form the hinge bearing. They are joined with a pin which is retained by a small ring passing through a drilling in the pin.

The owner of a Strut Braced Drifter has reported the failure of one of these hinge fittings at the bend or fold meaning that the hinge becomes useless. There are no records here on similar failures (or better put, no records can be found here) and a check with Austflight has not revealed any problems with the hinges.

All Drifter owners/operators are advised to check these hinges as soon as possible. They can be checked quite easily on pre-flights.

If the foregoing description is confusing and you have a Drifter, go and have a look and you will easily see understand the above. The lack of a diagram is regretted, but we here in the Office are fiddling with a "simple"(!) sketch program to enable drawings to be published in cases such as this but we are working on it - probably need a 5 year old kid to explain it to us.

R Hewitt-Cook

Technical Manager