I’m looking at purchasing my first Vans, a -6.
Everything looks straight however hands-off the airplane rolls to the left with about a 5deg/sec rate.
The ball is in the middle and with the stick in the middle and the ailerons neutral it flies straight.
However upon releasing the stick, the stick moves to the left and the airplane banks.
I’m just wondering if this is something that we’ll be able to fix.
Hi Seb, welcome to VAF and RVs.
You’ve already had a bunch of people give you a lot more info than you were expecting.
First step of distilling iit is to fly with two equal weight pilots and equally balanced fuel and see if you actually have a problem.
You probably have aileron trim, but it’s still simple to fix if you don’t (and aileron trim is easy to add).
If you’re new to RVs, it might help to know how finely balanced these aircraft are. In my RV-6, when it’s trimmed in pitch and roll to fly hands off, in still air I can “steer” it by shifting my body weight.
If I lean to the left or right, I get a very gentle roll. If I slacken the shoulder straps and lean forward, the airplane will subtly pitch down and accelerate. I can counter it by leaning back and stretching my neck so my head tilts back over the baggage compartment, which will make the nose slowly pitch up. Absolutely extraordinary the first time you see it, you’ll be giggling all the way to the hangar.
Very small changes in weight distribution are significant for RVs, that’s why they fly so beautifully.
You either have uneven weight distribution which can be trimmed-out, or you have an aileron radius mismatch which can be solved by following the SB everyone’s been pointing you at.
But don’t make any SB changes unti lyou’ve confirmed there’s actually a problem. If you’re flying solo in a side by side RV, there’ll almost always be a left turning tendency because there’s no weight on the passenger seat. That’s why we have aileron trim!
- mark