Wingtip Mis-match

Just finished drilling and installing nut plates on my -14A Wing tips. Not sure what moved but when I put the 2 alignment jigs back on the right wing the tip is slightly out of line with the trailing edge.....3/16? low. I am not a fanatic so I can live with it if it will not cause any performance issues. The option is to split the T/E of the tip and re-align it. Thoughts? Remember, this is a 14. I know a lot of folks will say that you should wait until the wings go on to fit the tips but I am building to the plans and the jigs and tooling hole are there for a reason. I probably let something move when I was match drilling the tips

I would wait. fixing the tips after mounting on the wings is pretty easy, plus you can cut the tip TE, fiberglass it and clamp it in place while on the wing for a perfect alignment.

But remember that just cutting the tip TE and bringing it into alignment with the aileron will not move the outboard TE corner of the wing tip, so you may have a kink in the wing TE where it transitions to the tip. The only way to fix that is to also cut the tip forward from the TE for some distance to lower the wing tip corner. AMHIK

ask me how I know

Yep - wait to fit wingtips until after wings on, flaps and ailerons rigged and rigging checked by a trusted helper who has experience.

The tooling holes are a nice place to start, but not absolute. To fix your issue I would lean toward drilling out the nutplates, filling the holes and starting over. A couple of bids of glass on the inside of the wingtip as you fill the holes will be more than enough.

Side comment - you should be a fanatic when it comes to rigging. I?ve worked several RVs that were improperly rigged, leaving the owners happy with the improvements.

Carl

Can't swear that it'll work with the -14 airfoil, but the single-digit wingtips can be rotated quite a bit within the end of the wing, to move the trailing edge up or down. I discovered (early) a similar issue with one of my -7's tips, and realized that the nose has quite a bit of flexibility. I pulled the clecos & was able to 'rotate' the tip within the end of the wing until the trailing edge aligned with the aileron. IIRC, the holes in the flange moved a small fraction of an inch.

No trailing edge splitting; just put it in the right place.

FWIW...

Carl Froehlich said:

To fix your issue I would lean toward drilling out the nutplates, filling the holes and starting over. A couple of bids of glass on the inside of the wingtip as you fill the holes will be more than enough.

Carl

Click to expand...

Yup, I had to do this. I let the tip shift and drilled all the holes. When cleco'ed in place, it was way out. I didn't have to remove nutplates, but the re-glassing of the tip to provide some fresh holes was pretty easy. If you're going for a better fit this isn't a huge task. So don't be too afraid of it, if you choose to go that route.

Logan

Thanks for all of the input. 3/16? doesn?t feel to far off so will wait until the wings are on and final rigging done and if not happy will circumcise the tip.