ORIGINAL: da Rock
ORIGINAL: vmsguy
I wonder if there's a practical size limit to using boost tabs.
By that I mean, when is a control surface (and by inference the plane) too small to make boost tabs not worth it.
Would a 1/4 scale be too small? 1/5? 1/6? What about small gassers? or even down to 1.20 or smaller birds?
It's actually fairly simple to establish the value of them for models.
With most of our popular, mass produced models, there will be one servo that is strong enough to drive one aileron. When we increase the size of that aileron beyond that requirement, the booster tab makes sense.
As for how small is the limit? We got servos for everything up to the big birds.
If you can drive all the surfaces with one servo each, that's the boundary.
I've never understood why there were and are so many, many big models that have 2, 3, and 4 servos on a tray driving just one rudder. And why so many elevators have 4 or ailerons use 4 or 6. Guess the manufacturers figure they sell more airplanes for 10-15% less to people who don't know there is a way the big bird they're buying could take 6 or 8 less servos.
I was thinking from an aerodynamic perspective. Can a smaller model gain agility with boost tabs without have to increase control surface size?
For example, can a big ol' trainer, that should really have a larger rudder area, gain rudder authority by just adding a boost tab to the rudder? Thus eliminating the need for possibly extensive modifications.