Like Dick I spent the first couple of years at McDonnell Douglas (before Boeing and before transferring into the aero dept.) designing control systems on the F-4K&M. Push rods went the length of the fuselage with lots of bell cranks, etc. and worked fine. I certainly think the airplanes would look better with the servos enclosed and it would stop the (granted small) effect of servos sticking out on the stab part.

Bruce, I should have added at the front I guess - I had been looking at a lot of the big monsters and thinking about control effectiveness, high deflections and high alpha work (Dick started it with his question earlier, let's blame him :-) and going through the mental gymnastics involved and there was a good shot of the elevator. So I started thinking about what made one control system be better than the other from all standpoints, aero, mechanical etc. but primarily aero. So I posted it here knowing there was some big airplane-aero-experienced guys here.

Asking the guys who do it because the other guys did it wasn't going to get a good answer. Really anyone that does the typical setup hasn't really thoght it all the way through unless like John mentioned it is done for some aero effects, I wonder if they have done that on the big monsters?

I pretty well got answers that agreed with what I thought. You can certainly put the question in wherever large scale aerobatic is spoken. No problem. Probably get somebody mad!!