All that’s left on the wing is to cover the ailerons and put the graphics on it. I always save doing the graphics on a plane until I have the plane completely covered, and then I will put graphics on both the fuselage and wing at the same time. So that leaves us with just covering the aileron. I do apologize on this step that I don’t have all the pictures of this step as those pictures were some of the ones lost when the memory card on my camera got corrupted. I’m posting all the pictures that I have left of this step and will explain what needs to be done.

Covering the ailerons is a very straightforward step, and doesn’t take too much time. Cut a piece of covering cover the aileron with (picture #1). As with everything else we do when cutting covering, cut it oversize so that we have covering to pull on as we apply it, we’ll cut the excess after we are finished. Start off here just like everything else we have done by tacking down one corner of the covering (picture #2 & #3), line up the covering with the inside edge of the aileron and we’ll pull and tack the covering using this edge as a guide. Now pull the covering tight and tack the other end of the aileron covering in place. Now go to the middle of the aileron and pull the covering down until the edge of the covering lines up with the edge of the aileron (picture #4), and tack it in place (picture #5). Continue pulling and tacking along this edge down the length of the aileron (picture #6). Here is where I ran out of pictures, so I’ll just describe what to do. After you have the edge tacked in place now we need to go ahead and iron down the covering to the aileron. On some planes with bigger aileron surfaces we could use the heat gun to shrink the covering before ironing it down like we did on the wing tips, but these ailerons aren’t really big enough to do that so we’ll just iron them in place. For this I prefer to use the iron with the hot sock on it. It’s pretty easy to do, just pull the covering tight and use the iron to seal the covering down to the aileron. When you have the entire aileron sealed then trim the edges and make sure that they are sealed down after trimming. Now go finish covering the rest of the aileron surfaces.

And that is it, with the exception of the graphics the wing is now covered. Take a few minutes and look over the work and make sure there aren’t any things that were missed. The biggest thing I usually find it edges that may not be completely sealed down. Taking the time to check for them and fix them now will save you tons of headaches later on when you start flying the plane, so it pays to spend a few minutes now making sure the covering is correct.

Next up we’ll start on covering the fuselage. So put the wing in a safe place until later and we’ll get ready to move on.


Pictures
1. Cut covering for the aileron.
2. Tacking down the corner of the covering.
3. Corner of the covering tacked in place.
4. Pull the covering in the middle so it lines up with the inside edge of the aileron.
5. Tack along the inside edge.
6. Tack the covering all along the inside edge of the covering.

Until next time

Ken