Closure of flap and aileron leading edges

Laser levelling was used to ensure the flaps and ailerons matched the washout of the wings. The wings were adjusted so that the tip of the step-on skins and ribs 8 aligned with the beam. The flaps and ailerons were twisted sufficiently so that their trailing edges lined up with the beam. Both flaps and the LH aileron required hole "cleaning" up to 0.4mm with a chuck reamer in order to make riveting possible. All leading edges were sealed with white Sikaflex Pro+. Notably, despite edge-rolling, both flaps has the leading edge open up in a couple of places by a fraction of a mm. These had to be strapped closed while the sikaflex cured. Once cured this tendency to open up was minimised.

Trial rivetting and strapping was used to get the surfaces to line up, to achieve the required degree of washout.

The resulting straightness of the flaps and ailerons was good, but not perfect. With the flaps lined up with the step on skin, and the ailerons lined up with the flaps, about a 4mm mismatch between the tip of skins 8 and the outer edge of the aileron appeared. This error was present on both wings and in the same sense, partly by design. With the ailerons in a relaxed and slightly random position, I believe this error will distribute and not be noticeable in practise. Given the errors have the same sense, I believe they will not induce any roll effect that would require trimming.

The error is mostly in the ailerons. I'll wait a bit to see whether any OCD kicks in and I do something about this.

A lot of photos seem to have been misplaced - when I find them I will add them to this posting