flyenforfun
Well Known Member
Perplexing heavy left wing problems.
I finished my -8 back in 2012 and on the initial flights we had a heavy the left-wing. We tried everything that vans told us to do and more ideas from vans Air Force forum. Nothing seems to work except re-drilling and lowering the left aileron out board hinge however that caused us to have a heavy right wing but with almost full left aileron trim it flew straight and level so I've lived with that band-Aid fix for about five years. Now I have decided to revisit the problem and try to fix it properly. This weekend I raised the left hinge 1/16 of an inch hoping that I would be able to trim the plane closer to neutral position. So what's happening now is with the trim in neutral position the faster I go the more the plane wants to roll to the left and the slower I go the more it wants the rollback to the right The strange thing is that if you hold the stick in level flight both Ailerons are in line with the wingtips and flaps which makes me think that there is some kind of airflow issue going on that I can't see. I've tried all of the standard fixes like rigging, squeezing trailing edges, trim tabs and even built a brand new right the Aileron i've had various results but no eureka moments. I feel like I'm missing something and not looking at the right thing. Any ideas? I would love to find the smoking gun. I believe everything is set right i.e. Rigging, wing incidence, wheel pants and fairings. Somehow somewhere I am inducing drag and the drag increases as speed increases and vice a versa. Maybe someone on this forum can think outside the box and give me an idea of where else to look.
Thanks.
I finished my -8 back in 2012 and on the initial flights we had a heavy the left-wing. We tried everything that vans told us to do and more ideas from vans Air Force forum. Nothing seems to work except re-drilling and lowering the left aileron out board hinge however that caused us to have a heavy right wing but with almost full left aileron trim it flew straight and level so I've lived with that band-Aid fix for about five years. Now I have decided to revisit the problem and try to fix it properly. This weekend I raised the left hinge 1/16 of an inch hoping that I would be able to trim the plane closer to neutral position. So what's happening now is with the trim in neutral position the faster I go the more the plane wants to roll to the left and the slower I go the more it wants the rollback to the right The strange thing is that if you hold the stick in level flight both Ailerons are in line with the wingtips and flaps which makes me think that there is some kind of airflow issue going on that I can't see. I've tried all of the standard fixes like rigging, squeezing trailing edges, trim tabs and even built a brand new right the Aileron i've had various results but no eureka moments. I feel like I'm missing something and not looking at the right thing. Any ideas? I would love to find the smoking gun. I believe everything is set right i.e. Rigging, wing incidence, wheel pants and fairings. Somehow somewhere I am inducing drag and the drag increases as speed increases and vice a versa. Maybe someone on this forum can think outside the box and give me an idea of where else to look.
Thanks.