A little progress XL H-58

[Chuck in Indiana]

Ok, let's assemble these struts. Drilled a hole in my antique (naturally) all purpose drill press V block and clamped it on. This will keep the hole on center, and headed in the right general direction. 

One.

Two will be just like the other one. 3 and 4, because of that weird 5 degree angle, will be a little harder. My 3/16" drills need work. It was entirely too much work to do this..
Beer o'clock. 

[DA Miller]

congratulation on some really fine work. Keep the photos coming. Especially on details of the weird 5* fittings.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Two. 

You have to bend the crap out of the wing to get that 2 degrees washout..

[DA Miller]

per posts on the forum a fair number have decided to not have the wash out.  I believe the flight characteristics were reported to be pretty much the same either way.  Right or wrong I think I'll forgo the wash out.  But like they say "to each his own".

[Chuck in Indiana]

Hmmm. You'd think that roll control at the stall would be better with wash out. (?) I'll do a search. Thanks!

[Chuck in Indiana]

Ok, I'm baaak.  In a brief search I didn't see much supporting no washout. I did see where the Tailwind has none. To be expected. I have talked a fair amount with Steve Wittman (name dropping) about the reason the Tailwind was designed this way. Naturally, all aircraft are a compromise depending on the mission. The Tailwind, for instance, was designed for speed. Dihedral and washout both slow you down by a measurable amount. Not much, though, and nothing like slots for roll control at the stall.
Mouser's mom was a race plane.

The original was a mid wing with no dihedral, or washout. There is a little pendulum stability with a midwing, but not as much as a high wing. That airplane is neutrally stable. When John designed the low wing, he put in some dihedral, but still no wash out. Designed to go fast, and.. it is difficult to accurately build the twist into a simple homebuilt with no struts to adjust.
FWIW, Mouser is neutrally stable in pitch and roll, and unstable in yaw. Accelerated stalls are an acrobatic maneuver for me.  Especially to the right. I've never been able to do one of those without losing 300 feet. Would some washout help that? I would think so, or maybe just stall strips. No matter, I've been flying this bird for (gasp) 40 years.
On a machine designed for gentle flying characteristics, I'll go with dihedral and washout. 
YMMV, of course.

[Vince Carucci]

I took a close look at the wing shape on a C130. It definitely has some washout... and for the obvious reason. However:

1.) The C130 wing decreases in chord length as you move from wing root to wing tip.
2.) The thickness of the wing also decreases.
3.) It's a laminar flow profile.

So you essentially have a different shape/size wing out at the end than you do at the root. This may be one way to preserve roll control when the inner portion of the wing is already stalling.

The Legal Eagle has a Hershey bar shaped wing from the root to the tip. I believe I read somewhere that, even in normal flight, a wing with this profile is already experiencing separation over the top of the wing before the airflow reaches the trailing edge. So if you decrease airspeed and increase angle of attack, separation may have moved so far forward that the aileron is already in a stall condition. If any of this is correct, washout may be more theoretical than functional.

I am going to pass on washout and maybe avoid the internal stresses of a twisted wing. None of this was confirmed with any type of testing.

Disclaimer: I am not an aeronautical engineer, all this is just opinion.

[Pilotarix]

Interesting discussion.

Here is some information out of the J3C owners manual. Probably not very helpful in the discussion. It just explains how the rigging of the J3C was done.
All things considered, and should I ever come to that point, I would decide for washout. I am not sure if the impact of washout on flying characteristics is key. It seems to me that the impact of washout in situations where the airplane doesn't want to fly anymore (stall) is more important. I wonder how many of those who claim that there is no impact on flying characteristics with no washout have also tested the airplane stall characteristics with no washout.

[Chuck in Indiana]

It seems to me that the impact of washout in situations where the airplane doesn't want to fly anymore (stall) is more important.

Agreed. Ideally, the stall starts inboard and travels outboard. What sold me on the Legal Eagle was watching Putt putt do some stalls and a one turn spin. It looked *very* Cub like.
Well, wash out or not, we need to make these 5 degree fittings. Here's how I did it. Bolted the fitting to a piece of scrap aluminum to keep it square and sawed it off.

Eyeballed the 5 degree angle and thought it looked in the ball park. Set up the toy miter gauge on 5 degrees and ground the angle.

Trial fit, looks good, marked it and had my third hand hold it in location while I tacked it.

Three.  How about that? The 5 degrees on the drawings is right.  At this point, both fronts are bolted, and the top left rear is bolted. The wing tip is still able to move fore and aft. I have the fuselage sitting level and square to a line on the floor. Dropped a plumb bob from the left rear wing fitting and marked it. Dropped it from the right rear, and slightly moved the wing until it lines up with the left. Well, easily within 1/8" which is as close as I can work with levels, chalk lines, and plumb bobs. 

Drilled that critical hole, said, "three." 
Now, it's just a matter of doing number 4 the same as 3..

TWEEEET! Quitting whistle. It's beer o'clock.

[DA Miller]

Thanks for this post.  I'll definitely refer back to this when my time comes. Back to my wash out post.  My comments were based solely on what I had read in different posts on this forum.  So there was no rigorous scientific analysis of the effect of washout on the legal eagle. I do recall (but not who) one poster who said he had flown his LE with and with out the washout and he could see no difference in handling. A truly subjective conclusion. I can't remember if he commented on the stall characteristics.  Also some builders talked about building the twist in when building the wing to forgo the need to
"twist the crap" out of the wing later on.  So as some old time poet said, "to twist or not to twist, that is the question."

[Chuck in Indiana]

The trick with washout will be getting them the same. Normal airplanes have a fork end and adjustment to tune out a heavy wing. This will require making a new fitting.
Probably. 
Just eyeballing it, I would think this is a "rudder" airplane, and a heavy wing may be able to be picked up with a trim tab. Dunno. That will be part of the fun of flight testing.

[Kamcoman77]

Anybody thought about using stall strips so the wing does not have to be warped?

[Chuck in Indiana]

Good day today. Made up some bushings and mounted the aileron pulleys. Naturally, I still need to make pulley guards and lighten up the pulleys themselves, but that can be done in the dead of winter.

The plans say to put the bellcrank hinge point 6" from the strut fitting. Eyeballed that, looked ok, and used my all purpose V block to drill the hole on center.

Scaled the c/l of the holes from the aileron horn to the bellcrank, and it's about 10". Says 9" on the plans. Grandmother was right again, "waste not, want not.."  I still have some 1/4" diameter titanium from when I built Mouser 40 years ago. Cut off a couple of pieces.

Titanium isn't particularly easy to machine, and running a die on it with my little toy lathe was too much for it. It at least started the thread straight, though, and I ran 1" of threads on the rods with a die stock.

The plans call for forks with 3/16" holes, but what came in the materials kit had 1/4" holes. While I'm griping.. there wasn't nearly enough cable for the airplane. Very few of the bolts are the right length.There aren't enough cable fairleads, etc. If I were to do it over again, I'd just laboriously go through the plans and order everything myself instead of ordering a "kit." (rant off)   
Made an executive decision, and reamed the bellcrank and horn 1/4" to use what I had.

Strangely satisfying to move the bellcrank and see the aileron go up and down..  

[Aaron]

"Strangely satisfying to move the bellcrank and see the aileron go up and down.. "

Not that strange... Just between us girls, when my controls hooked to my ailerons I somehow was entertained with them going back and forth for at least 10 minutes, luckily nobody was there to witness such insanity  Looks like some nice work!

In regards to your washout discussion, washout does improve effectivity of ailerons near stall range. Theory is that when the 'rest' of the wing stalls, since your wingtips are washed out, or at a slightly less angle of incidence, the flow across the airfoil out toward the tips haven't quite stalled yet, which means there is still some effective laminar flow across the ailerons, which means they could still have some effect. That is why many airplanes like a C150 sacrifice speed and have some washout so that you can have some roll control whilst stalling for all the low time nose dragger student pilots who stall with the skid ball out the passenger window (I was that person once  ).

When I built my eagle I figured the aircraft was so slow to begin with it probably isn't going to make much of a difference when stalling at 21mph, and stall is an overstatement, I should say mushes and sinks at 21 mph. I knew one thing for sure is that I definitely didn't want any wash in, so I decided to go for dihedral, with no wash, and if anything, error on the side of wash out. So my LE has dihedral with a sprinkle of wash out

Hope this helps and keep up the good work!

[DA Miller]

concerning the stall strip idea: If all that is required is as your picture shows it sure seems like a neat simple solution to the wing twist situation.  I think I've read every post on this forum and I've never seen it mentioned or discussed.  Maybe someone who is knowledgeable on the subject will chime in on this.