Originally Posted by
Zeeb
Well that's easy to say; Piper no longer exists and hasn't for quite a long time. Hard to compare a Cirrus/Cessna to an old Piper. The Comanches and the early Arrows were some of GA's best efforts at a real, useable by the average person and not too expensive GA aircraft were admirable IMHO.
As for your model; an out of balance control surface can only be made worse by ignoring the issue. It may be a model, but it's still an airplane.....
Zeeb
The term 'out of balance' assumes that the balance point is a non-variable, and ignores the loud fact that the plane being modeled does not have a 'balanced' stab. I use air-quotes because I know the stab IS balanced, but not in the sense you mean. This notion that all full-flying stabs should be balanced on the pivot is scientifically absurd... and the best evidence of that is the absence of any examples of this in the [production] full-size aircraft world. The balance point depends on many things--many factors and variables. Go to ANY production full-size aircraft with a full-flying stabs and you will see a stab drooping at the trailing edge. Go to any full-scale Piper aircraft with a full-flying stab and not only will you see one that is NOT balanced on the pivot, but one in which the stabs suddenly 'balances' once you start the engine. Why? The airfoil is designed to balance and 'fly' at a given speed and pressure. So... before we can say a stab is 'out of balance', wouldn't we need to know what the other variables are?