Required clearance on Bottom edge of aileron

[Cbretanag]

In the plans,on page 19-14, it says that the clearance between the bottom trailing edge of the wing and the bottom forward edge of the aileron, (just in front of A11), should be.08 min and .20 max. Is this clearance required at all aileron positions,  or just at the neutral position?

[Kent Ashton]

Speculating that it is just something Burt pull out of his a__.   A compromise between ailerons that could bind under G or icing and too-sloppy builder tolerances.  I had to file my wing bottom edge to eliminate the alleron brushing against the wing.  They are probably in the .08" range.  I will defer to Marc, though.  I don't really know what I'm talking about.  🙂

[Marc Zeitlin]

7 hours ago, Cbretanag said:

In the plans,on page 19-14, it says that the clearance between the bottom trailing edge of the wing and the bottom forward edge of the aileron, (just in front of A11), should be.08 min and .20 max. Is this clearance required at all aileron positions,  or just at the neutral position?

The way I interpret that (and the way I inspect, although I use 0.060" as the minimum, not 0.080") is that as I move the LE of the aileron up and down, there should never be any time where the TE of the cove and the LE of the aileron come within 0.060" of one another. If they do, I sand the TE of the cove fwd so that there is enough clearance (generally, I slide a popsicle stick between the two to ensure enough clearance).

The reason for the clearance is to avoid aileron lockup during high "G" turns - there have been instances where someone pulls 4 - 5 G's and then tries to roll out of it, but because of the bending of the wing (and the NON-bending of the aileron), the aileron sticks. The easy solution is to push and unload to get back down to 1G, but that's not always at top of mind during a 4G turn in which your ailerons have stopped working.

So yeah - ensure that there's appropriate clearance at ANY position of the aileron LE.