On Wed, 7 May 2008 13:55:43 -0700 (PDT), WingFlaps
wrote:

On May 8, 12:17*am, Stealth Pilot
wrote:


your questions dont have that much depth btw.
just a lot of misunderstood aerodynamics.


Naysaying is the mark of a troll wihen no facts are given to back it
up.

Cheers

accusing someone who disagrees with you of being a troll is so lame.

ok lets get this in proper perspective.

the average GA tailplane has a span of about 8ft.
the trim tab sits on only one side and it is about a foot span and
maybe 2 inches chord.

just considering the tailplane chord through the trim tab for the time
being. you are looking at a chord of about 2 ft.
wound to it's full extent it would have maybe 5% effective change in
the aerofoil characteristics. bear in mind that it lives down near the
trailing edge where the contribution to lift is minimal.

so the overall effect is perhaps 5% of 1/8th of the tailplane.
calculate that out and the change of the characteristics overall is
something like 0.000625 or 0.06% change.

take into account the fact that trim tabs exist for all their life
near the centre of travel and so have minimal effect anyway and you
have wasted a huge amount of design time on the most trivial of red
herrings.

you dont need to consider the size of the trim tab in the early part
of a design at all.

in the interesting discussion you had with bertie all of his posts
were correct in pure theory terms but in overall actual effect you are
talking about a variation between an original 100% and 99.937% or
100.06% of the rest of the tailplane. ...which I why I think the
direction these discussions are heading is nonsense.

if you want to be at the top of the dog pile thats fine by me.
if you want to design good aeroplanes put the ego in the back pocket
and try building on the hundred years of knowledge built up by your
predecessors. you'll never learn until you accept that you need to
learn.

Stealth ( been studying and learning aviation for 37 years now ) Pilot