Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Attaching Flaperons to an Ultralight Aircraft (such as the FAR Part 103 Belite Aircraft)

I hope you've had a great Christmas season!

In this continuing online assembly manual, we'll attach our flaperons to the wings of our ultralight aircraft, the FAR Part 103 compliant Belite.    This assembly procedure is designed for our Belite aircraft, but the procedure is educational for any ultralight aircraft builder.

This is easy:  all we need to do is to clamp the flaperons in place using vise-grips; a couple of alignment templates make accurate alignment very easy.  After everything is lined up, the flaperons are bolted in place using AN3 hardware (bolt, washers, nylok nuts).

Here's the view looking down the flaperon, with three vise-grips already in place.



And here's a view of each flaperon attachment point:




Yes, those pictures are kind of redundant.  To take some of the boredom out of this post, I'll make a few comments about the wing and flaperon.

The wing shown in the pic is the same wing which recently was used to make illustrations for our wing build assembly manual.  It has aluminum ribs and carbon fiber spars, but you can't see them: they've been covered with medium weight dacron fabric; they've also been painted with cream colored EkoFill primer from Stewart Systems. The flaperon is shown exactly as it comes from us; except that it has been painted with a gray aluminum primer.  (When we ship it to you, it is ready to bolt on your wing.)

Now, back to some useful pictures.  A mounting jig is easily made from a wood stick and a flaperon cutout outline.  The wood stick is clamped parallel to the chord of the wing; as a result, your flaperon will be mounted at exactly the correct angle of incidence.



And here's one more view, looking down the middle of the chord line of the flaperon.


Everything is lined up:  it's time to drill out the predrilled holes in each flaperon fitting, and bolt them together with the AN3 hardware.  (Use a 3/16" drill bit.)




The flaperon control horn on each flaperon still needs to be mounted, but that will be covered in another post.

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