Heavy wing is the wheel pants

[pa38112]

I've had a very heavy wing (heavy even with that side tank empty and the other full) and have slowly been checking alignment and rigging. Two days ago I had the wheel pants off and decided to try a flight w/o them - no more heavy wing! That is great news. Now I just need to figure out if one is providing lift, or if one is pushing down. I am thinking that flying with one at a time will answer this question.
Just though I would share what I have found for others...

[Mike S]

Originally Posted by pa38112

I am thinking that flying with one at a time will answer this question.

Not sure if will answer your question------or if it is even a smart thing to do.

You will be inducing a lot of drag differential in the yaw mode.......might even mask what you are trying to look for concerning the heavy wing issue.

Hopefully others who are more knowledgeable than I will jump in with some good comments.

[az_gila]

Originally Posted by pa38112

I've had a very heavy wing (heavy even with that side tank empty and the other full) and have slowly been checking alignment and rigging. Two days ago I had the wheel pants off and decided to try a flight w/o them - no more heavy wing! That is great news. Now I just need to figure out if one is providing lift, or if one is pushing down. I am thinking that flying with one at a time will answer this question.
Just though I would share what I have found for others...

I would guess it's more of a pushing sideways effect than a lift effect.

Lift the plane up and check that the pants lie accurately on a fore and aft line.

[SHIPCHIEF]

That's interesting;
The late great Steve Wittman was alleged to have built one low drag wing tip, which he installed and flew with the original style tip on the other wing. He determined the effectiveness of his design by the resulting flight: new tip flies the wing higher, has less drag causing turn etc.
So there is some past practice to go on...
As a safety point, has anyone flown an RV with only one wheel pant on?

[Ron B.]

Had a brake stick on our RV-10. Removed one wheel fairing (to unstick) and flew about one hr. home, with no big effect.

[alpinelakespilot2000]

Flew with one wheelpant off when Mike Seager and I had a flat tire at KAST in Vans RV-7 a couple years ago. No noticeable effect. YMMV.

[Gash]

I flew with my pants off once. Wait, sorry. Different thread.

[jrs14855]

Wittman not only did that with different wingtips, he did it with completely different wings, sometimes with different airfoils. I have audio recording of Oshkosh forums where he talks about this. It was also documented by Jack Cox in the SA article about the Olds V8 powered Tailwind. That was the test aircraft for the triangle wingtips that have proven so successful. It took about half ailerons to keep the wings level with the triangle tip providing a lot more lift. The V8 Tailwind hangs in the terminal building at Wittman Airport.
The Wittman midget racer "Buster" the first homebuilt aircraft displayed in Smithsonian/Air and Space, has a fuselage that was built in 1931 as Chief Oshkosh. As Chief it had four different wings, as Buster two additional sets of wings.