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Old 05-05-2005 | 05:19 PM
  #10  
Rotaryphile
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Joined: Feb 2002
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From: Fredericton, NB, CANADA
Default RE: Mass blancing ailerons

Somebody should tell all those misguided full-scale aircraft manufacturers that they are wasting time, weight, money, and drag on their mass balancers.

I have found that carefully applied mass balancers can cure almost all cases of flutter. Overbalancing a control surface can be worse, much worse, than no balancer at all particularly if it is attached at the tip, since it can, but moving the control surface in the opposite direction in response to random excitation by rough air, actually excite a higher harmonic, which almost invariably happens at high speed, and is usually extremely destructive. I made that mistake, and the airplane was virtually destroyed in the air - just a huge cloud of pieces raining down, and the thing was flying straight and level at full throttle at the time, no "G" load at all, other than that caused by normal air turbulence. Live and learn - experimentation with high performance models certainly keeps you humble.