Originally Posted by
Mein Duff
Don. Of course I am interested in your conundrum from an SE5 / builder standpoint. Lots of good tips and info. so far,. It is obvious from the last frontal photo that things have gotten rather "out of true". Good thing you have a Robart incidence meter.
Your frontal pic shows two major issues that I can see.
The incidence on your Starbord side ( yes= right side if you are the pilot sitting in plane) is more positive than your Port side.
This will of course in create more lift on that side, thus the Port side roll effect.
Also your cabane is not symetrical which may be causing some alignment problems to begin with but I doubt that this is causing you any major attitude problems.
All of these issues have now been corrected (see the finished rear view on page 4).
On my Recent 1/4 Fleet rebuild I spent 15-20 hrs. adjusting the incidence to get all wings within 1/10 of a degree of their proper amounts.
...within 0.1 of a degree??? What kind of meter are you using? I can maybe discern half a degree on the analog scale of my Robart meter but that's it.
This necessitated making all new wing root inserts so that the wings would be at the correct setting WITHOUT any cable adjusting help.
I then firmly held the wings in place as I made my cables and made sure I had the same incidence once all was removed.
There was a slight discrepancy in the winglets but I wasn't willing to do any "re-building' to resolve that. At any rate, all the incidences are now equal.
For the first time in my building career I tried "0" degrees engine side thrust and "0" degrees down thrust...
Let me just say that it flew like it was "on rails" on the first flight which made me a firm believer in getting all incidences as close to identical as possible and also not worrying too much about side and down thrust.
My model doesn't have any down thrust but after a nerve-shattering last flight where it just immediately cut left and wouldn't turn right even with sustained full right aileron, it's just prudent to put in some right thrust. If it flies well...and after I get used to how it responds to rudder, I may slowly move it back towards zero.