In Part 6, I prepared the Counterbalance for the Left Aileron. During today’s session, I completed the same steps for the Counterbalance on the Right Aileron. Here are the completed leading edges for the Left and Right Ailerons.
After I completed the work on the right Counterbalance today, I wasn’t completely happy with it. The plans want the Counterbalance to be flush with the outboard edge of the Nose Skin. The picture below shows the Left Aileron (completed in Part 6). You can see the Counterbalance is perfectly flush with the Nose Skin in the area circled.
Here is the Right Aileron.....not really happy with the result. In the circled area of the picture below, you can see that the Counterbalance is NOT exactly flush with the Nose Skin. How did this happen?
When I originally fit the Counterbalance to the Nose Skin, two #40 holes were match-drilled on either end of the Counterbalance with the Nose Skin. Eventually, the Counterbalance was removed from the Nose Skin for addition preparation steps. Then, the Counterbalance was reinstalled to make the remaining eight #40 match-drilled holes in the leading edge of the Nose Skin. My guess is I swapped ends on the Counterbalance when I reinstalled it for this step. So, the end of the Counterbalance you see in the picture above, should have been on the other end (or the outboard end).
I haven’t called Van’s regarding this mistake and I’m sure I could leave it this way and it wouldn’t cause any problems. However, it’s not right. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again....I’m not going to build a PERFECT airplane, but I can get it as close to RIGHT as possible. So, following that philosophy, I ordered a new Counterbalance and Nose Skin from Van’s.