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Old 06-27-2003 | 08:10 PM
  #10  
Montague
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From: Laurel, MD,
Default Wing Tip Designs

AV8TOR,
I took a peak at a picture of an Uproar. That is pretty much what I was talking about, except only towards the wingtip. When I say tapering the aileron, I mean making the aileron chord smaller. I have no idea whythe Uproar has the ailerons tapered at the root as well.

In general, there are two reasons that I've run accross for tapering ailerons, to reduce aileron flutter, and to make it look cool. I'm going to guess the Uproar aileron shape is from a combination of those.

I've never flown an Uproar, nor do I know anyone who has one. But, taking a WAG, I'd say those ailerons loose effectiveness in a hurry when you start relying on propwash for control authority.

Here's a couple of quick aileron shape pictures:
First, on this plane, my ailerons were dynamically shortened. It made for some "interesting" performance.



One these purple wings, you can see the ailerons have a smaller chord at the tips. This was done to fix an aileron flutter problem. It did reduce the roll rate a noticeable amount compared to straight ailerons:


On my new wings, I wanted to keep the ailerons straight, reduce tip stall, and fix aileron flutter all at once. The answer was winglets: