Heavy left wing

[kota]

I have a aileron trim tab on the left aileron and it is (was) about a 35 degree up angle. I bent it straight with the bottom of the aileron. I went flying
and of coarse the left wing was heavy. The right flap retracks all the way, the stop screw does not contact the flap stop.So I un screwed the left flap stop screw
untill the plane flys straight with the left little trim tab straight with bottom of the flap. It tooh 2 1/2 turns of the screw.

My question is was this the right thing to do to fix a heavy wing or was the trim tab to do
the work?
which produces the smallest amount of drag?

Rudder trim to center the ball is right about 1/2 inch
many thoughts would be appreacated
Kota

[kota]

That 1/2 inch right is at the rear of the rudder useing tail cone as center
Kota

[N3322G]

There's a full procedure for rigging in the service manual. You can find it on the Home Page of the ICS website under the Tech Tab. It is an iterative process and this is where I'd suggest you start.

[kota]

Thanks Pat
I have gone through the rigging manual everything is in spec, angles are good, ailerons in line with bottom of flaps, etc
the book does state that the trim tab and the flap adjusting screw can be used for a heavy wing. I was looking for ideas on which is better to use,
the trim tab or the flap screw, which would do the job better
I averaged last year in the Montana sky race a speed of 191.35mph on a 135 mile coarse, so my plane does good, so I was looking for ways to lower drag
and I straightened the trim tab and adjusted flap to see what would happen. Then I new some one here would have done this before.

Just looking for info and past experiences
Kota

[David Pfeffer]

Kota,
These are the exact type of questions we answer in the wind tunnel during aircraft design and development. I spent a lot of time with drag questions like this on F-35 designing the flight control system. Sadly, even with that experience, I can't say which would be better on the comanche. There's too many variables. As annoying as it is, your best bet is to try both and take some in-flight measurements (unless you want to create a giant computational fluid dynamics model or build a wind tunnel model). The aileron of course has a greater moment arm for roll than the flap, but the surface area is also smaller. It's tough to say which would result in lower drag. It honnestly may be negligable.

Good luck! Let us know what you find!

[Rhay]

i am sure that what i had was a once in a life experiance,but,when i purchased my pa-24-180 it had a left heavy wing, i went through a couple annuals, then one day i was up in the left wing looking at the aileron cables and noticed ,i believe, that the top cable on the pulley cluster at the o.b. wing,by the bell crank,was off the pulley and was using the bolt to ride on. this caused the rigging be off on the whole system..might be helpful. r hay