Gentlemen, I have an important question.
How did the tailplane balancing work out for you with the Europa
supplied counter weights? How much did you need to remove from the
weights, or did you need to add some weight?
I have a large weight, a middle sized one, and three smaller ones. Prior
to filling and painting, one of each size was sufficient to roughly
balance the tailplanes. The tailplanes were built by the factory and
have not been modified (except for the mandatory mod, but this was at
the axis of the tailplane and shouldn't have much influence on the balance).
Now, my airplane is painted, and I discovered that with all 5 weights on
the balance arm, I'm still slightly out of balance.
The manual strongly suggests that it should be "more than likely" that
some weight has to be removed, and that it is very unlikely that one
needs additional weight. But I need additional weight, and I want to
know whether this is normal, and if not, what the reason is.
As I said, the controls where factory built, and I had no reason to
believe that they were heavier than average.
My airplane has been filled and painted by a well respected painter who
has not only built himself an airplane as well, but has filled and
painted many airplanes from the Dutch homebuilders club. It is not
likely to assume that he has done a bad job on my airplane or used non
suitable materials, but at the moment it starts to look like he added
quite some weight to my airplane. Also the ailerons appeared to be
heavy, as they appeared in balance without any of the material removed
---From the lead blocks.
Knowing the weight I needed to add to balance the tailplanes I could
roughly work out that each tailplane gained about 1 Kg of filler and
paint. Is this reasonable?
So, I would very much like to know whether it could be somewhat normal
that the balance weighs are just a tad to light for their task.
I plan to weight my airplane soon, but I'm getting quite worried about it...
Frans
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