if you were to put strip ailerons on a semi-symetrical-flat bottomed constant chord wing, would you anticipate the neutral position to be slightly down or parrallel with the wings underside? i'm thinking that the parrallel position wouldact like slightly"up" flaps on a u-control and requiresome additionalamount ofnegativestab incidence tocombat it.of course, the ensuingadditional drag of slightlyup neutral positionaileronsis understood,as i believe a wing of this type has allot of down wash compared to a fully symetrical wing, where strip ailerons are commonly seen. i also realise this issomething that might have to be found out during maiden flight, just wondering if i can predict a reasonablycloseinitial set-up and a reatively smooth maiden flight for this build.
secondly, is there any advantage to keeping the ailerons fairly narrow in this situation? innitially, i thought i wouldmake them wider at thefuse and narrow taper them towards thewing tips to give the wing some tapered looks.
what are your thoughts and thanks in advance........ronward

Tapering the aileron will help reduce any flutter tendancy, as will careful wood selection, light 1/4 grain stock is a prerequisite. As for the rig, well, as you suggest lining up with either top or bottom will modify the wings camber, the usual solution is to align with the imaginary extension of the camber line behind the trailing edge. FWIW.
Evan, WB #12.

Are you adding a flat aileron to a tapered LE?

If so, follow the schematic in order to keep the original camber.

pimmnz..
that makes sence.......i never thought of it. the wing has about2.7 deg. of camber... i have a digital angle guage, so it's easy to set ....thanks much!

thanks for the diagram Lnewqban,
yup, i got......essentially,the aileron then becomes part of the airfoil profile, producing lift as well as control surface.
the leading edge is straight, made from 9/16" square stock and rabeted onthe two adjacentfrontsidesfor the c-tube sheeting. makes a neat-easy tobuildup leading edge as the upper and lower tube sheets can be glued on the square stock before the assenbly is attachted to the ribs. almost, sort of "reversed building order"........normally, the leading and trailing edge is put in the jig and the ribs are glued on inbetween the the edges,then the c-sheeting.....well this way..., the ribs are all in place on the jig and the leading edge assembly( 9/16 square and upper and lower sheeting)is then glued, as a component,onto the fronts ofthe ribs, with the sheeting sticking straight out, equally, above and below the front of the ribs.with careful glue application to the fronts of theribs(keep the glue only on the areas that contact the 9/16 square stock, so you don't create a hard, straight spot on the area just behind the leading edge) and the glue is cured, the sheeting is then bent down onto the ribs and held down with tape and pins. it eliminates the problems of holding the very front edges of the sheeting down tight on the leading edge radii.

Thanks for the tip, Ron.

FWIW: Strip ailerons should be used only on light ,slow flying models.
Structurally the versions typically sold over 50 years ,in kits were one piece of questionaable quality wood with no real resistance to twist.
Under load (speed) - twist or flutter is easy to induce
The old style bent wire hookuppoints for one servo use - is yet another issue.
I built n sold hundreds of kits with this setup in the 1970's and thru the 1990's
They were easy to do and in most cases - worked well -EXCEPT when made thin or with flexible wood and linkages -
All in all - two small servos on two shorter , wider ailerons is a much better choice.
The aerodynamics - ? the response and trimmin on two servos (today's servos ) is easy to do and flutter chance is greatly reduced.

rmh,
thanx for the advice.
the servos are wing mounted about 1/3 length out from the fuse and the ailerons will be rod driven. i have chosen fairly good 1/4 sawn hard balsa 3/16 thick,for the ailerons. thier length is 25-1/2 andtaper from 1-1/2 at the fuseto 7/8 at the tips. typicaly giving me 12%+/- wing area.
i think they are plenty stiff, as far as my judgment goes. i have to admit, they were an after thought. i started out building the wing with barn doors in mind, but as construction progressed, i forgot to cut them in and i then thought it would be nice to give the wing some taper, so i just left the trailing edge alone and decided to try strips.