My S bends in the hinges are per the factory. It looks a bit radical but
the flaps do move smoothly. Anyone wishing to be complemented for good
workmanship, however, should hide the hinges in fairings.
I did not go into great detail in the earlier msg. but the flap core's two
pieces do not have the builder made joint in the correct location either -
also a result of the factory cutting these pieces wrong - thus the center
hinge is out of position relative to the XS wing. Note my perspective: I
have assumed that the wing is made correctly but the foam is not, purely an
arbitrary point of view, and of academic interest only, since it really does
not matter which is right.
When you fit the flaps to the wings you will likely find, as I did, that
there is some mis-match at one or two hinges. The amount of bending needed
to get the aluminum pieces to come together nicely is determined by trial
and error. Fortunately I did not have much error because I was careful not
to bend too much, incrementally bending each until reaching a good alignment
without going too far (thinking all the while about how easy it is to break
a paper clip by this method).
At the root end the flap core is intentionally shorter than required. The
manual mentions (almost casually) to set aside the piece of the core that
was wire cut from the root end - this is later added to the "finished" flap
closeout to fill most of the gap between the "original" flap closeout and
the fuselage.
To avoid having to fix things later, I recommend that you check how the
length of your aileron core matches the wing before adding the glass (so you
can adjust the length now rather than later), and especially that you verify
the location of the mass balance arms relative to the cutouts in the wing.
Others have posted messages suggesting installing the mass balance arms
according to the wing mass balance box locations rather than to use the
manual's measurements. I concur wholeheartedly. If you have not seen the
XS wing yet here's why: the mass balance box location is determined by
recesses molded into the wing, so that must be considered a fixed location;
it matters not where the arms are located as long as they have clearance to
move with the aileron.
Measure twice, cut once may be good advice but it won't necessarily keep you
---From getting it wrong unless you also verify the fit with any mating
components (preferably before the epoxy cures). And....with any luck, the
problem has already been addressed and your cores are cut correctly because
it should not take long to change a few lines of code in the CNC program
that drives the hot wire machine - does anyone know if this has been done?
Best regards,
Rob Housman
A070
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 1:18 PM
Cc: Fergus Kyle; europa@avnet.co.uk
Subject: Re: RE: Europa QA and UK autos
> Perhaps I am somewhat naive, never having built an airplane before, but I
> expected Europa to perform the "final inspection" of the goods prior to
> shipment and not have the customer find so many mistakes. It seems to me
> that most of the problems with my kit could have been eliminated had
Europa
> considered how changes in one component affect mating components. This is
> especially obvious in the XS wings where the aileron and flap cores were
cut
> too short (I suspect the lengths were correct for the Classic wing)
leaving
> two fairly large spanwise gaps along the wing, and the location of the
flap
> hinges on the flap and the wing are so far off that two of the three
hinges
> required rather severe S bends, the mass balance boxes are badly aligned
Ouch, I knew about the aileron core being too short, but not about the flap
being too short, or that the flap hinges are incorrect. I have built my
flaps
but not built my wings or ailerons, what can I do to improve matters?
Brian
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