Restored to perfection

You may recall that last summer AOPA’s Husky was ground looped at an Ohio airport while it was on its way to Wisconsin for EAA AirVenture Oshkosh. Thankfully, the incident occurred at low speed, and the two occupants of the airplane were uninjured. During the ground loop sequence, the left main gear buckled and the monstrous 31-inch Alaskan Bushwheel tire was fortuitously wedged under the cockpit, preventing the propeller from striking the ground. There was no propeller or engine damage; the left landing gear and the left wingtip took the brunt of the impact during the incident.

The airplane was transported to Capital Flight, an Aviat Husky Authorized Service Center located in Middleton, Wisconsin (see “Unexpected Road Trip,” AOPA Pilot, October 2025). Owner Matt Hofeldt’s team carefully inspected the airplane and discovered the tire had slightly bent the artfully curved bottom of the stainless-steel firewall.

Although the damage to the wing and firewall could have been repaired, we opted to order a new left wing, a new firewall, and a new left landing gear. When we give this sweepstakes airplane away to a lucky winner later this summer, we want it to look like it just rolled off the Aviat Aircraft factory floor.

About six weeks later, a truck from Afton, Wyoming, arrived at Capital Flight carrying the new parts—all painted at the Aviat factory to match the sweepstakes airplane's’ beautiful Recreational Aviation Foundation orange and white paint scheme. Then the hard work began: reassembly to factory standards. “This airplane won’t leave my shop until it is perfect,” said Hofeldt.

Perfection can take time. That little bend in the firewall turned into the most time-consuming portion of the repair process. “People look at that simple piece of metal and assume we can replace it in a few hours,” said Capital Flight Director of Maintenance Al Checky. “But it’s a big project.” The engine had to be removed, and every engine control and electrical wire had to be disconnected and pulled through the old firewall. Then, every hole in the firewall (I counted 63) had to be drilled to exactly match the old firewall, and all of the cables and wires had to be reinstalled.

“So far, we’ve completed a new firewall installation, new left landing gear installation, and new bungee cords,” said Checky. 

AOPA recently visited the Husky at Capital Flight to document an important milestone: the installation of the undamaged right wing and new left wing. Checky and his crew hoisted the wings into position—one person holding up each corner. Each wing was temporarily held in place with tapered alignment pins and smooth, round screwdrivers for a loose fit. Then, one by one, those pins and screwdrivers were changed out with new hardware, which was then torqued to specification.

There is more work left to do on the airplane, although the list is finally getting shorter. Checky recited his to-dos: “There’s fuel lines and rigging that has to happen yet. Tail feathers got to get put back on, and then rigged there also. There’s still quite a bit of final assembly; a bunch of the belly and skins and sidewall of the fuselage. The windshield was taken out to get access to the firewall. So that’ll have to go back in. There’s still a big handful of pieces that go back on the plane yet.”

Once the airplane is completely reassembled, the fuel system will get flushed and the gascolator will be cleaned to make sure no debris got in the fuel tanks during disassembly, transport, and reassembly.

“It’s going to be ground run a couple times before we put somebody in there and make sure that everything’s happy, and then it’ll get some test flights to check for rigging and trimming,” said Checky. “The rigging and trimming is a pretty in-depth process. A couple things got a little extra taken apart by the moving company [such as the aileron cable turnbuckles] that had they been taken apart a little different would have saved us some time. But that’s alright, we’re going to fix it up like new.”

“There will be no damage history on this plane because all the parts are brand new replacement; nothing is repaired,” he said. That means there will be no Form 337s required by the FAA (to report major repairs or alterations). A logbook entry detailing new part numbers is all that is required. “No one will really know that we even touched this airplane if we didn’t tell them that we worked on it because everything is right back to factory specs, factory parts, factory painted. There’s really no better way to repair an airplane.”