Technicalities

Peter Garrison

Tuesday, January 01, 2002 at 10:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Designing the roll control system for a homebuilt aircraft presented significant engineering challenges, particularly in integrating aileron differential to reduce adverse yaw within a confined fuselage space.
Implementing aileron differential, while intended to improve handling by reducing adverse yaw, resulted in a nearly 30% reduction in the aircraft's theoretical roll rate, highlighting a trade-off between performance and flying qualities.
Despite the reduced roll rate, the author's calculations suggest the aircraft will still meet minimum performance guidelines, and he concludes that pilots, like Burt Rutan, are capable of adapting to an aircraft's specific handling characteristics.

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||| |—|—| | | | Since it consists of little more than a stick at one end and a couple of ailerons at the other, I thought that hooking up the roll control system of my homebuilt would not have been much of a problem. But then you wouldn’t think anything would be much of a problem, until you try it.

The pilot’s end of the system is a sidestick that swings 30 degrees to the right and left, turning a torque tube that runs aft along the left side of the airplane to a point behind the pilot’s seat and above the rear spar. There, a crank and pushrod convert the rotary motion of the stick into a vertical, linear motion.