The final control surfaces to install are the flaperons (why not aileraps?) so install them is what we done did. First they had to be wrapped which took us one session, and I’m not sure if it was the lack of practice or what but we did a not great job of it, lots of wrinkles. Well it never was going to be a show plane.
They sure look nice and shiny from the right distance.
Now wrapped they could be rigged in their proper position, by which I mean that when the stick is vertical the flaperons are set for straight flight, and also they have the full range of motion (13 degrees up and down). First they were attached to the brackets, just hanging down
Then we centred the stick and determined where the flaperon aligned with the wing
and holding the flaperon in position we marked off straight, 13 degrees up, and 13 degrees down.
With marks made we can now adjust the vertical rods that move the flaperons up and down so that straight lines up with the right mark. While looking at the control rods Allen noticed I had put the bushings on the wrong side of the control rods so I had to remove them all and do them again.
Fortunately this was not video with a soundtrack inside my head since this was the third time I had done this and the swears were flying just a little.
Here’s a flaperon set at straight
I’m a little bit worried about the setup though. The pilot side vertical rod is almost at full length, the passenger side is at shortest length and ideally it would be a little shorter. Why this discrepancy? Are the wings wildly offset? Will this thing take off and make an immediate spiral into the dirt?
Using the 9V battery we extended the flaperons to check for travel of the flaperon attachment with the pre cut hole. There were a few scrapes so Allen used a drill bit to gently enlarge the hole in a few places. By the time he was done the flaperon had full travel up and down, left and right.
There’s another concern that the instructions say to set the flaperon motor rod at full in to set the flaperons. We didn’t do that, it is a little out. If we set it all the way in then I think this will push the flaperons up and the passenger side won’t be settable because there is no more room to shrink the vertical rod. So now I’m trying to find out how far down the flaperons are supposed to extend, it needs to be enough for the stall speed reduction needed for regular landings and extreme STOL.
I might mess with the rod setting and see what happens though right now I think everything works for flight so maybe it is all ok.