Folks, with the assistance of many of you on the site, my trim issue is fixed!
For reference; my trim system is operated by tightening/loosening a cable that runs from the cockpit to just aft of the pilots seat, where it is connected to a rotating metal lever. From there, the lever moves a different cable, which is connected to the elevator trim tab, giving nose up/nose down trim. Additionally, the metal lever is connected to a spring, which keeps tension on the metal lever so the mechanism is nice and tight, and prevents the trim tab from moving inadvertently. I looked into getting one of the Ray Allen trim servos, however a simple inspection of my current trim system revealed that the cable, which adds/releases tension to the spring, was way too loose. So initially, it took 1/3 of the movement on my trim adjustment handle in the cockpit, before the cable was adding any tension on the spring . Basically, I was losing 1/3 of my nose up trim. I tightened the cable, so now I was getting a no kidding full nose up trim, but this was still not enough. While this certainly helped, the plane still had an overall tendency to nose down during cruise, even with full nose up trim. At the advice of many of you on here, I took some sheet metal, cut it out to the approximate size of my current trim tab, bent it to an approximate 30 degree angle (about the same angle as my trim tab with full nose up trim), and double sided taped it to the trailing edge of the elevator. The result; this GREATLY neutralized the nose down tendency of the plane. It’s almost like it gave the plane a “factory reset”, so now when the trim tab is in neutral, the plane is fairly neutral. And trimming nose up or down actually changes the nose accordingly! I took this a step further, and did the same thing on my right wing. My plane has always had a slight “roll left” tendency, so I took some more sheet metal about 4”x4” bent it to about a 30-45 degree angle, and mounted it to the trailing edge of my right aileron. This in theory would force my right aileron up, and should help neutralize the left rolling tendency. After all was said and done (both with the elevator and the aileron trim tabs), the plane actually managed to fly hands off. Not an exaggeration, a “true”, hands off flight condition. I almost wondered if I was dreaming, because it was the first time in over two years I could actually take my hand off the stick and the plane would continue to truck straight ahead! So to all of you out there who took the time to reply to my original post a few weeks ago, or have reached out to me personally, THANK YOU! The plane is so much more of a pleasure to fly now! V/R Sam Spanovich N6399U 74S, Anacortes WA Sent from my iPhone _______________________________________________ Search the KRnet Archives at https://www.mail-archive.com/krnet@list.krnet.org/. Please see LIST RULES and KRnet info at http://www.krnet.org/info.html. see http://list.krnet.org/mailman/listinfo/krnet_list.krnet.org to change options. To UNsubscribe from KRnet, send a message to krnet-le...@list.krnet.org
