FLAPS




Here's where I started.  After a sleepless night, I took a die grinder and cutoff wheel to cut the wing skin top and bottom, then worked with a hack saw blade to cut the ribs while working the saw blade vertically through the wing.  It should be noted that the inboard wing stub skins were built with Safe-T-Poxy using the same plyfoam techniques as used by Dan Diehl for the Diehl wing skins.

This is a view of the rear spar after cutting the trailing edge off the wing stub.  The nylon bushing bolted to the side of the fuselage is the bearing for the flap actuator torque tube.  The small hole just in front of it is where the cables were once run to aileron bellcranks behind the spar.  They were relocated in front of the spar by the gentleman that started this project.





Bonding the spar blank into the trailing edge of the wing.  This has nutplates bonded to the back side for mounting the flap hinge.

Test fitting the flap back onto the wing.  I bonded a spruce spar into the back of the wing and front of the flap.  You'll note that the spar in the wing is already wrapped in carbon fibre.  I'll do the same with the flap, but will encapsulate the whole flap.  I'm using a rolled piano hinge for the flap hinge.




The flap wrapped in CF and covered with peel ply (in this case, 6" dacron tape).

The linear actuator for the flaps and associated linkage.  Trying to buy an actuator was a frustrating experience.  I did the research and decided on what I needed.  I found a company that made them, but they wouldn't sell to the public.  After 2 weeks of back and forth with their sales, they refered me to a reseller.  The reseller would be happy to sell me what I needed, but only if I bought a minimum of 100 of them.  I finally ordered an actuator from Van's.  It is bigger than I wanted, more powerful than I needed, heavier than I wanted, and cost twice what the one I wanted cost if I only could have bought it.  However, this one was readily available and will do the job.

The flap attached to the wing and actuator linkage.  With this linkage sticking out the side of the plane, I need a plan to hide it and fair it in as well.

Flaps fully extended to 37 degrees.