| > Sealing the ailerons is a wise thing to do, and you only need seal one | > side, to prevent air passage. | >
| > But if your ailerons are scale "barndoor" ailerons typical of the | > Citabria, please DO NOT set them up as flaperons. This can cause | > tip stalls even worse than you experienced before.
What he said. He's right on here.
| > Look at ant full scale ship. Flaps are installed INBOARD, and operate | > EQUALLY, to add lift at low airspeed, AND to help insure the inboard | > portion> of the wing stalls first... | >
| > If you drop both ailerons at the outboard portion of the wing, this will | > effective create lift (and a higer AOA), allowing you to slow the ship | > down and still maintain flight... But should you use aileron at this lower | > airspeed to correct a bank, you will "unbalance" that lift and cause the | > high wing to drop, most often with disasterous results.
It's not so much that you'll unbalance it, it's that you can easily stall the wing that's supposed to go up, and the stall will happen on the outside (thanks to the flaperons being down) so it'll violently rotate in the wrong direction, usually leading to a crash.
| What I'm doing is dropping flap and not adjusting trim. the center | of pressure on the wing moves back and the plane speeds up (a | little) use throttle to adjust glideslope (more like plummet slope, | but that's splitting hairs)
Actually, the flaperons should make the plane fly *slower* by increasing lift and drag.
| I want to clean up the wing to get the whole wing further away from a stall
The best way to do this is to go faster.
| as the plane comes in through the wind shear / low level turbulence | at our (always windy) site.
Then what you need to do is land faster, not slower.
On a windy day, landing upwind, as your plane gets closer to the ground, the wind usually slows down (the drag of the ground slows it down), decreasing your airspeed. In extreme cases, this can cause your plane to stall and crash. It's best to have more airspeed than you think you need when landing in the wind.
(Landing downwind, the airspeed increases as your plane settles down, which is what makes your plane `balloon' down the runway into the trees beyond :) )
Also, with more airspeed, you're less likely to have a gust or lull in the wind send your plane out of control or into a spin.
| My feeling is to go with the one side only (which I hadn't thought of) and | do it to the top side. ?
Doesn't matter. All you need to do is stop the air from flowing through, which you can do with clear tape, monokote, whatever. Doesn't matter if it's the top or the bottom or both sides ...
Do seal your gaps. As for the flaperons, be very careful with them -- they can easily cause more problems then they solve. You may want to try spoilerons instead -- where you put the ailerons up rather than down. That will increase drag but decrease lift, so you'll counteract with increased elevator. Your plane will fly a little faster than before, and descend a good deal faster ... great for burning off altitude. (Not as good as full crow, but still good.)