September 2001So I started work on fitting the hinges to the other aileron and immediately ran into a problem - the flange was not deep enough! This was not the same as the first aileron with excess epoxy in the groove; I was about 3mm out. I think I may have forgotten about the 3mm recess in the leading edge for the hinges when I was me or there was too much micro in the corner. Either way, it look serious and I will need to take some advice on how to fix it. By the way, I bought a set of riffler files from Permagrit to sand into the groove - very useful little tools, get some!
I decided then to fit the mass-balance arms to the first aileron. The first thing that you will notice when you start this job is that the template in the manual is next to useless as it will not fit the shape of the close-out. I spent a happy day working my way through several versions of foam arms trying to get the right shape. The main problem is that you keep thinking that a little more off here or there will give you a better fit, but you end up taking off too much and have to start again. I eventually ended up with two arms that I was happy with. I bonded these to the aileron. I was then checking out Steve Genotte's web-site when I noticed his advice to leave the fitting of the weights until you attach the ailerons to the wings to ensure that the weights do not interfere with the box in the wing. So I stopped at that point.
Following my problems with the port flap cores not matching, I had talked to the factory and it seems that I had an inboard core that had been cut from an outboard core, so they sent a replacement inboard core. So, with matching cores, I set about the port flap. Unfortunately, the new core was not a perfect match to my existing ourboard core. It needed a fair degree of shimming to get the correct height and washout and then some sanding to get the surfaces to meet exactly and to get the trailing-edge joggles to line-up.
Once everything was set-up, the lay-ups went pretty smoothly. I did have to order some more uni from the factory in the middle, though. I was probably too generous when cutting earlier plies and I ended up with two pieces of about a metre on the rolls. Also, when the cloth was delivered, it was damaged a little at the edges where the ends of the roll had been mauled by the Royal Mail. I did not think that this would be a problem, but I ended up having to remove about 2cm from either edge of the cloth to get it straight and I had many problems with stray strands of glass. But eventually it all manoevred into place correctly.
The wings arrived this month and I finally have something that my friends think looks like a piece of aeroplane!