[JonJay]

I am looking for any suggestions in regard to fine tuning the airplane now that my pants and wheel fairings are installed.
I have always had a slightly heavy left wing. Well, maybe. It gets lighter as I fly off the fuel in the left tank. I also do not have my right seat installed. So I am thinking when I get the seat in with a passenger over there, things might correct themselves.

I installed my wheel fairing and pants. The wing got slightly heavier and the ball is out about 1/2 ball. The ball use to be almost perfect, maybe out 1/4 or less.
I removed the pants and flew with just the leg fairings. Ball still out 1/2 or so. I played around with the fairings, twisting them in different manners within the 1/4" or so the intersection fairings allow me to do with no noticeable change.

The ball is only out 1/2 or so in cruise at relatively high power. At lower power settings, the ball is centered. The ball also centers itself in turns without any rudder control, in both directions. Wierd.

I have read a lot of posts on this. I am just at a loss and feel I am just kind of hunting and pecking my way around until I find, accidently, what works.

If anyone has any recomendations or has fixed similar problems, let me know.

All in all, it is not bad. I could easily put in some small trim tabs and be done with it, but I want to avoid using tabs if I can and see no reason why I can not make things right.

 

[Kevin Horton]

Have you done all the stuff that Van's recommends?

 

[JonJay]

Have you done all the stuff that Van's recommends?

I dont believe the bulk of what they are saying can be practically done on a finished aircraft without a huge amount of work. I love em, but it is a little to late to "fix" wing incidence, verticle stab position, etc... Can be done, but wow, what an endeavor and my issues just are not that bad.
These where all checked and rechecked. I will check them again however as well as lift the tail and check the fairing and pant alignment, again.

Aileron Alignment was done before I finished up my wing tips. I did order new brackets and redid one side due to some alignment issues, so that is done, and it was very easy to do.
The wing sweep varies slightly on my wings. One wing is aft 1/2" If I remember while the other is 0". This was the best that could be done as the QB fuselage center section was misaligned from the factory with one side being 1/4" more forward than the other side. I would suspect that this kind of thing is more common than not. Vans was not surprised, nor concerned, neither am I. However, it may be playing into the slightly heavy left wing.

I would say my wing heaviness is in the 18 lb range that Vans's talks about although I have not followed the procedure to double check. I plan on installing my right seat and loading some wieght there and see how it flies without the pants and fairings. I will then reinstall them and see where that puts me.

I am just looking for folks out there that have had similar small issues and how they fixed them. I consider a slightly heavy wing and 1/2 ball alignment to be small, but I know it can be better, if not perfect. I think I know what needs to be done, but any ideas of what actually worked for other people might shed some light and save me some time.

Thanks

 

[Rockyjs]

I'm not an expert but.... I would put the fairings on per plans and fly the aircraft. Since you spend the longest segment of flight at cruise I would then attempt to use a rudder trim tab to center the ball at what would be your normal cruise speed/power setting. Then deal with the aileron issue. You will have to adjust the rudder as the ailerons are tweaked, and ultimately you should find what works best. Just my two cents worth

 

[Build9A]

flap

Double check your right flap with flaps in full up position. This is an easy fix if you are lucky enough to find this to be the problem. My right flap needed a couple of turns on the rod end to bring it up totally flush with the bottom of the fuselage. It was lower than the left flap by maybe an 1/32" to 1/8". I didn't notice it till I crawled under the plane on the hope that might be the problem. A very small adjustment fixed my problem of heavy left wing. I also had about 1/2 ball off center but finally resorted to a small rudder tab to fix that.

 

[JonJay]

Double check your right flap with flaps in full up position. This is an easy fix if you are lucky enough to find this to be the problem. My right flap needed a couple of turns on the rod end to bring it up totally flush with the bottom of the fuselage. It was lower than the left flap by maybe an 1/32" to 1/8". I didn't notice it till I crawled under the plane on the hope that might be the problem. A very small adjustment fixed my problem of heavy left wing. I also had about 1/2 ball off center but finally resorted to a small rudder tab to fix that.

Great suggestion. I will look at the flap position carefully.