ORIGINAL: f3a05
Just my opinion,but I have been flying competition F3A for a long time now.....
Obviously it's ideal to have absolutely equal movements on separate elevator halves, but as long as they're close(say within 1.5mm in each direction),I seriously doubt if many flyers would ever be able to tell,or demonstrate, any flying discrepancies.
And,most importantly, total loss of elevator function, is the one flying control that is virtually certain to result in a written-off model-if you lose one half you'll be surprised how little rolling effect it has-it just reduces the pitching power available.
Reminds me of the time I broke the down steel cables in one of my earlier designs. The up cables were fine. The model did an extraordinary dance of flying then zooming straight up...flying then zooming up. I realized that I could somewhat control the thing by bumping throttle at the right time or dropping throttle to idle at the right time. Managed to slowly turn it back toward the field and land the thing in a ditch full of water. That was lucky. Timing it just right, I managed to make it pancake in and actually suffered no other damage. No dilusions of extraordinary flying skill here....just dumb luck!!! LOL
I have never used steel cables on my elevator (or rudder) since. Kevlar cable is the only stuff I use for control surface rigging
MattK