Friday, 3 July 2009

Squeezing the aileron, or Kutta Rules!

In the post "The first hundred days. Part II", see below, or click here, I indicated I had a heavy left wing and planned to squeeze the RH aileron to fix it. I knew the theory, but was very concerned as to just how much adjustment would be required since I had never actually done it in practice.

It has taken a long time to pluck up courage to do it, but as a first step I decided to very gently squeeze two bays of the aileron with my hand seemer as you see here. I protected the paint with some old soft hardboard, and squeezed it very gently so I could just see some change in the reflection when I took the pressure off.

I was quite sure that I had not done enough but decided to add another bay each time I landed until the problem was fixed. So, today I flew, and with this gentlest of adjustment it is perfect. So, if you have to do this, go gently!