DA40: water puddles on the carpet

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DA40: water puddles on the carpet

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A flight instructor and his student left the right side window open overnight in heavy rains (starting 0:14 of the video: https://youtu.be/kG6nUunpOF4 ), leaving water puddles on the carpet. The right seat cover was all wet too. The G1000 worked fine, so was the flying with the extra pounds of water. The flight school manager/CFI seemed to ignore my suggestion of pulling the carpet to dry it completely. Knowing it being a plastic plane, should I really worry about something under the carpet to have corrosion? Mold anyone? I have see rust marks trailing the metal bolts on the tail plane, so if there are metal components under the carpet I'd be worried. Thanks in advance!
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Steve
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Re: DA40: water puddles on the carpet

Post by Steve »

If that happened to my plane, I'd pull the carpet out (and the seat cover) to dry.
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CFIDave
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Re: DA40: water puddles on the carpet

Post by CFIDave »

I made the same mistake once in my DA40: I left the right vent window open when the plane was tied down overnight in a thunderstorm. When I returned the next day, the right cup holder was completely full of water and my right sheepskin seat cover was soaked.

But the drain holes in the bottom of the fuselage let all of the water there run out. So I took the sheepskin off to dry and went flying to dry out the plane and carpets. Never had any problems afterwards.
Epic Aircraft E1000 GX
Former DA40XLS, DA42-VI, and DA62 owner
ATP, CFI, CFI-I, MEI
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Re: DA40: water puddles on the carpet

Post by Guest »

Pull the carpet before it molds and stinks forever.
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