Originally Posted by da Rock

Good method, but a question:

"give it 5 clicks of down trim" or "set it to 5 clicks of down trim" ?

When maidening somebody else's plane, "centering the surface" right off isn't usually in the cards. And not necessary if it's my plane. If it is your plane, while you're doing this at home while assembling the sucker, take a minute and start with the servo arm squared up to the pushrod, THEN do whatever it takes to "start with the surface centered". (adjusting the pushrod length usually)

With somebody else's plane at the field, after I've cranked in the TX trims to get the surfaces right, looking at what's on the TX trims is worth knowing. It tells you how square the servo arms are to their pushrods. Too much trim and we open up the plane and "Installing Pushrods 101" begins. If they're too impatient for that, then I ask around to see if anyone else would like to do the maiden. Why act like a hardaxx, if nobody else wants it, I go fly it. And on landing, look at where all the trims are now. Often one or two has lessened the TX settings. They've often got the servo arm off one way and the pushrod length off the other way. If they're both off the same way, that showed up as too much trim.

I always ask if they're done any of the magic tricks the TXs today can do to "save you time zeroing trims". If they have, I usually ask to see inside the model because you got no clue where the servo arms are relative to their pushrods.

BTW, if right off any surfaces go the wrong way, I ask 'em to take the plane over to the shelter and open it up. Fiddling with trim settings to center the surfaces isn't the best next step.