“Slowly” – wing & aileron mod

I liked my new Slowly pretty well, but I couldn’t help but wonder how it would fly with a straight (or, at least, straighter) wing. So I built a second wing, using the same dimensions, but without any dihedral whatsoever. I made the ailerons really small for some reason that I can no longer remember – 1″ deep and about 7″ wide.

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Here’s how the new wing looks on the plane:
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And it did, indeed, fly pretty well, although aileron response was minimal, and turns still took a whole bunch of rudder.
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I’ve cut the ailerons deeper and longer, nearly tripling their surface area. Here you can see the old aileron on the left, and the new aileron on the right.
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Here is one of the new ailerons with the old aileron laid on top, for comparison.IMG_1450

The new ailerons are 6.5″ wide at the TE. I wanted to keep the ailerons comfortably clear of the inner wing ribs, so that’s all the wider I could make them.IMG_1451

 

Flight tests on the straight wing were promising but the plane really, really lacked stability. I decided a few degrees of dihedral should help out.

To add the dihedral, I cut through the wing at the front and back, while leaving the center section intact. Then I gently bent the wing to the desired angle, and added thin wedges of foam to fill the resulting gaps at the front and back.
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