captainron55746
Registered User
Hibbing, Minnesota
My son Rick bought a PA-12 has been bugging me to do some ski flying. He has the 12 at a control tower airport so I was toying with the idea of putting the C3000 skis on the 12 but he found a place at a small field and we have a set of Federal 2000 straight skis from the last 12 so we are good to go now. I took out the C3000 and since I haven't put them on for a few years (got tired of putting them on every year and not going anywhere so I said I wasn't going to put them on till I knew I had someplace to go). I think that Rick and I will likely be doing some winter flying so I decided to go through the skis and get them ready for next year. I remembered that the reason I came to the conclusion to put them away was that they needed some work before I put them on again. I took them out and had a look at them. One of the aluminum strips that holds the plastic bottoms down had worn through and about 4" of it was missing. The other ski was thin on that piece also. I should have just changed those two pieces of aluminum strap and they would have been good to go, but noooooo. I thought I might as well do a full service of the skis and be ready for some serious bush flyin! The plastic bottoms were 3/32 and that was thin enough that they rippled and were sticking down below the aluminum strips and then rubbing. So I thought that I would just change the bottoms and put on 3/16" plastic. Here is a photo of the skis before I started.