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45 Degree fabric covering?

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PTAirco

Well-Known Member
Joined
Sep 20, 2003
Messages
4,006
Location
Corona CA
Another thread prompted me to think about this: normally when fabric covering a wing with heat shrunk Dacron, one simply unrolls the fabric as it comes off the roll, onto the wing, and attaches it. Subsequent shrinking, no matter how carefully done, will always cause some degree of scalloping between the ribs. If one were to apply the fabric at a 45 degree angle, would this scalloping effect be reduced?

I remember from model airplane days, when covering a wing with nylon this way it also picked up a huge amount of torsional stiffness. I know one isn't supposed to make an allowance for this effect in the design on an aircraft, but when an advantage can be had for no weight increase, might it be worth doing? I know there would be extra work in joining the 45 degrees strips, but nothing impossibly difficult.

Anybody experimented with this?
 
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