Now that the ailerons are balanced and the torque tubes are installed, it’s time to verify the motion of the ailerons. The openings in the wings that the torque tubes go through are sometimes… incorrectly defined. So now the ailerons are installed and they are moved through their range of motion. This revealed numerous binds.

So now the openings in the wings have to be made larger. Malcolm has a 5-foot long piece of 1″ electrical conduit that is covered with 36-grit sandpaper. It removes the foam but it’s only good going in about 3-feet before you lose leverage. And it can only go in from the outside.

So I can an idea. Since I wasn’t using the factory supplied aluminum aileron torque tube, I had this 12-foot long 3/4″ piece of tubing. So I slid Malcolm’s sanding tube over the longer tube. Then the whole thing is slid into the opening. While Malcolm held the inner tube at the engine compartment and arc’d the tube, I sanded away at the foam with the outer tube on the aileron end.

Here’s the sanding tube in position.

And here’s the view of the finished result.

It’s hard to get a good picture but the end result is that the aileron has unobstructed movement through it’s full range of motion.