Rigging ailerons

I'm puzzled with what I have regarding some slop in the ailerons, not sure if it's normal. Flaps, ailerons, wingtips all line up nicely. When I clamp each aileron to flaps together all is tight at the sticks with no slop at all. If I remove one clamp on either wing I can move the aileron 1/8 up and 1/8 down, the sticks inside moving that amount with either aileron. Is this a normal amount of movement which I'm calling slop? If not I don't know where it's at, all nuts are on bolts and torqued.

I seem to recall the same thing. Not sure how much though. At the time it seemed more than I thought it should be....

Try clamping the elevator as well and repeat. Due to the stick geometry there is a small aileron movement with elevator movement.

I did just realign ailerons with elevator clamped to stabilizer and glad I did since they were off when elevator clamped. There is still though the movement of one when the other aileron is clamped where the slop is not there in the sticks when both are clamped. Not sure where the play is, but must be normal?

rvdave said:

I did just realign ailerons with elevator clamped to stabilizer and glad I did since they were off when elevator clamped. There is still though the movement of one when the other aileron is clamped where the slop is not there in the sticks when both are clamped. Not sure where the play is, but must be normal?

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This is an important detail. The ailerons do move slightly with elevator movement. I aligned the flaps/ailerons and tips apparently with the elevator in the pitch down direction. In flight I noticed that my ailerons drooped ever so slightly compared to both the flaps and the tips. I flew this way for a couple of years.

After playing around with cruise climb with full up/reflex flaps and 0 deg flaps, I discovered the full up/reflex flap position is optimal for almost all flight conditions.... but then my ailerons are drooped slightly compared to the flaps and that can't be good.

So then I figured out how aileron position and alignment is affected by elevator position and did a little realignment. With the ailerons aligned with the flaps in the full up/reflex position I gained 2-3 knots in cruise! I assume my climbs improved as well.

The bad news is that my tips are drooped slightly relative to everything else and there's no way to easily fix that but we'll just leave well enough alone for now.