Rg 14 Airfoil Question...

[inSANe DIEGO]

Hey guys,

I am building the Sport 400 plane that can be found in the construction section of the ezone. The wing has a 6 inch constant chord, but I goofed when sheeting the wing (first time sheeting a foam core wing) and managed to basically chop about 1/2 to 5/8 inch off the trailing edge. :eek: I was lucky to have actually kept the airfoil shape up to that point so instead of being able to sand the TE to a sharp edge, it now has about a 3/32 thick TE. Can anyone give me a fairly acurate idea as to how this will affect the flight characteristics of the plane? Will it cause an adverse effect? Will it raise the stall speed considerably? How bad? Will it make the plane unstable? What about the top speed of the ship?
Any suggestions on how to best fix the goof if worth the trouble and if it would really matter would be greatly appreciated... hoping to maiden next week.

Thanks,
John

[raptor22]

It will basically hop up the drag, making the plane slower. That will be the largest effect.

--Alex

[Dragon Soaring]

Just sand the TE to a nice egde and call it good. you lost some area of the wing but you increased the aspect ratio and thats good. all in all it will fly, rg 14 have so little camber that it should be ok

Chris K

[BMatthews]

Call me a perfectionist but I'd glue on a 1/2 inch wide strip of balsa and then sand that down to something close to the right shape.

[inSANe DIEGO]

Thanks guys. I decided to try a strip of balsa glued onto the TE. it was stronger than I thought it would be. I then sanded it down to match the airfoil TE and soaked it with thin CA. I now have a 1/32" thick TE. Looks great! Thanks again... :cool: