Rick,
Well, to just go fly a new design wing spar is not an experiment it is a crap shoot. Proof loading is ok if done right as you did. Now the results of the experiment is the wing will hold 5G static. Now a wing of your design will not have to be proof loaded. You will also feel a lot better on that first flight where you introduce all kinds of asymmetrical loads into the structure.
You are making great progress!
Charlie Johnson
Ogden Utah
Sent from my iPad
On Sep 17, 2012, at 3:15 PM, "Rick" <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.> wrote:
> I finally got my load test out of the way. I had several people tell me they thought it was an unnecessary stressing of the wings, but a lot of these construction techniques were new to me as well as working with composites, and my wing was not constructed exactly like any other CDs that I was aware of. I wouldn't have felt at ease flying it without a test. My plan was to test it to 5 Gs but when calculating the necessary weight I forgot to subtract the weight of the wings so I loaded about 400 pounds more than I needed to. The test went well with really no noises other than occasional "bonks" as the leading edge oil-canned as the wings bowed down. At least until we got a crap-the pants "bang" toward the end. After several anxious minutes we found a screw had sheared off a diagonal brace on our test stand. Everything returned to normal after the load was removed and if I ever built another I wouldn't do the test. I uploaded a couple pictures to my photo section.
