I was there that day on Spruce Knob when the carbon-fiber LE on Mike's TRX just snapped off while being set up. That was the day when I decided I would never own a glider with carbon-fiber leading edges. It's just too difficult to see when there's been damage done. I seem to recall Mike speculating at the time that he thought the damage may have occurred on a previous flight when he dragged a tip coming into land, but regardless of how/when it happened, the LE failed catastrophically during set up and that was a lucky thing!huddlec wrote:Mike Chevalier's LE on his TRX did not break from a landing. It was damaged by a loading-on-the-truck incident. It wasn't until the glider was being set up by another pilot at Spruce Knob launch that the broken LE was discovered. The pilot lifted the wing to install the big tip fairing (or whatever those tips were called) and the LE snapped a couple of feet from the end. Very disturbing for the pilot since he was about to fly the glider.
JR