Aileron Alignment

[Randy]

I imagine this has been covered but my searches failed so here goes:

I have attached the wings for permenant. The flaps and ailerons and all the push tubes are in place and rigged basically per the instructions and drawings.

Things look pretty well aligned with the ailerons and bell cranks in the neutral position, but the flaps could use a little more upward adjustment to mate up to the bottom skin better. Maybe 1/8th in. upward would look pretty good.

In this situation, would it be better deal with a slight gap between the flap overlap skin at the bottom, and perhaps bend it up a little, or.... cheat the ailerons upward a little from the neutral position?

I need to decide on this prior to fitting the tips. I suspect bending the flap skins up is the safe thing to do, but perhaps others have cheated the ailerons up a little with no ill effects, or gained some speed in the process?


Randy C

 

[Ironflight]

Randy,

The way I aligned everything was to first lock the ailerons at the "alignment position" as shown on the plans (there are a couple of alignment holes in the tip rib that line up with the trailing edges.Lock the ailerons using the linkage. Mount the tips to line up with the ailerons - however you need to do that. Then align the flaps to the ailerons, and "cheat" the fuselage end of the lower flap skins to meet the fuse. This gives a nice straight trailing edge all the way across, and the cruise airfoil is right.

Good luck!

Paul

 

[robertahegy]

I agree 100% with Paul.

Roberta

 

[Randy]

Thanks for the responses Paul and Roberta, I figured that was best anyway but it is always good to see what has been working for others before blindly following directions and cutting the material.

Installing the tips is going well and easier than I thought it would be.

Randy C

 

[sprucemoose]

Proper allignment is more important than asthetics. I started out with my flaps, ailerons and tips all nicely lined up. When flight testing showed a heavy wing, I ended up adjusting the surfaces to their proper positions. Now it flies straight, but the surfaces don't line up exactly. Oh well, now you know why we all park with our flaps down.