Frans,
I built my own tailplanes and they required less weight than that supplied.
I recently helped someone balance their tailplanes who had used factory
built parts. We needed all of his weights plus what was left over from my
weights. His aircraft was painted by an auto guy and could be on the heavy
side regarding filler and paint. 1 Kg per TP sounds a lot to me but I did
not do a "before and after" weigh so I will leave it to others to comment.
Hope that helps.
Regards
Brian Davies
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-europa-list-server@matronics.com
[mailto:owner-europa-list-server@matronics.com] On Behalf Of Frans Veldman
Sent: 24 November 2009 14:50
Subject: Europa-List: Tailplane balance mass
--> <frans@paardnatuurlijk.nl>
Gentlemen, I have an important question.
How did the tailplane balancing work out for you with the Europa supplied
counter weights? How much did you need to remove from the weights, or did
you need to add some weight?
I have a large weight, a middle sized one, and three smaller ones. Prior to
filling and painting, one of each size was sufficient to roughly balance the
tailplanes. The tailplanes were built by the factory and have not been
modified (except for the mandatory mod, but this was at the axis of the
tailplane and shouldn't have much influence on the balance).
Now, my airplane is painted, and I discovered that with all 5 weights on the
balance arm, I'm still slightly out of balance.
The manual strongly suggests that it should be "more than likely" that some
weight has to be removed, and that it is very unlikely that one needs
additional weight. But I need additional weight, and I want to know whether
this is normal, and if not, what the reason is.
As I said, the controls where factory built, and I had no reason to believe
that they were heavier than average.
My airplane has been filled and painted by a well respected painter who has
not only built himself an airplane as well, but has filled and painted many
airplanes from the Dutch homebuilders club. It is not likely to assume that
he has done a bad job on my airplane or used non suitable materials, but at
the moment it starts to look like he added quite some weight to my airplane.
Also the ailerons appeared to be heavy, as they appeared in balance without
any of the material removed from the lead blocks.
Knowing the weight I needed to add to balance the tailplanes I could roughly
work out that each tailplane gained about 1 Kg of filler and paint. Is this
reasonable?
So, I would very much like to know whether it could be somewhat normal that
the balance weighs are just a tad to light for their task.
I plan to weight my airplane soon, but I'm getting quite worried about it...
Frans
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07:46:00
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