In the newly emerging area of 3d flight, everybody is raving about control surface size. why not just use stabilators?

Clam..

Go on then....Enlighten us..What are they?... what is ther function, etc, etc, etc.....oh ..heres the biggie ...why is'nt eveyone wearing them..

stabliators are stabilizers that act as control surfaces as well. A stabilator (sp?) would be 100% of the chord of the stabilizer. for instance, look at the elevators of an f-14, f-15, f-16, (the list goes on and on) and those are stabilators. i am curious as to why they have not been adopted for 3d flight yet. they are tough to wear, but i suppose it could be done

Too late. There are already a few that use them. I've seen pics of at least 2 or 3 designs with them.

To get the best out of them it's wise to use a thick, stall resistant symetrical airfoil like the Eppler 474 or 472.

Clam ...tell us more [:-]...that was a bit brief ..which surfaces [:-]...how do they work ...how are they controlled..

for 3D? little planes?
just whack em out of any light stiff board material - If all you are trying to do is hover - the airfoil is on little (no) consideration.
Or just have em milled from titanium in a thin diamond shaped cross section - or - ferget it .
BTW , huge control surface area, especially the overdone top rudder balances can be adouble edged sword.
One series of composite models has so much counterbalance that the plane can and DOES go into violent rudder occillation.
This is a nasty thing -inherant on pispoor, cobbled together flying stabs /rudders etc..
I have seen models destroyed due to this trait.

Isn't it just an all moving tail, differentiated from tailerons in that they have no 'aileron' function?

yep. but not just a tail. any surface. (but i have never seen an all moving aileron)

(but i have never seen an all moving aileron) //////////////// What other kind is there? If an ailerion is not movable it is called a trailing edge I think.

i mean as in the entire wing acts as an aileron and the entire wing swivels.

Wright Flyer ?

yeah, but they werent set up right and they dont seem to be used much.

....So.....Wrong flyer then ..Wright..

hmmm I've heard of these. most people just add -eron to whatever is all moving. (wingeron, taileron, fusaleron )

The Wright Bros. stuff used wing WARPING as opposed to a pivoting wing. Different game.

Wingerons, as in pivoting wings, keep coming up in slope gliders. The Sig Ninja uses wingerons and an older Dodgson design for a little sloper also used them. There's others but the names of them skip me for the moment.

camber control like 2 part elevator and stab has more control power at extreme throws than a full flying stabilator has. Jets use full flying because of supersonic compressability issues, in other words moving the LE becomes more effective then the TE.
I am no expert but this is what i've read on DJ aerotech, and i agree with what Dick is saying about too much Balance surface is not good either. I like mass balancing my tabs to lessen flutter tendency

i am not talking about wing warping like they used for ailerons, i am talking about the way they used elevator control

Do you mean a full flying stabilizer like on this pattern design?

i cant tell

Yes like that, but the amount of throw needed for pattern is less than for 3D, some small models get away with it, but IMO to do it on a larger model even a .46 size would not be worth it, there is an EPP electric foamy that has a full fly stab, it weighs 8 oz RTF its called the Blade i think

yes all moving surfaces were first used on the un-flown Miles MACH 1 design which us Brits gave to the US government in return that our scientists would get some research info. In practice the UK gained nothing from the exchange - but the US took all the ideas from the Miles program and used a hell of a lot of the techniques on the Bell X-1.

The reason for all-flying surfaces is that at the point of entering supersonic flight, compressibility effects produce control reversal - the tailplane/fin flexes the wrong way, so that up means down and left means right etc. V. Nasty for a lot of pilots with conventional surfaces in the early days of supersonic research.

The Bell and the Miles had all-flying surfaces.

Think of it this way: re models/ sub-sonic planes: Flaps on wings increase the total lift a wing can produce by increasing the effective camber of the wing. If all-moving surfaces were better (i.e. more powerful) then you would be able to get the maximum lift out of a wing just by pulling the nose up indefinitely - and adding flaps wouldn't increase the lift co-efficient. However, to get the maximum lift co-efficient from any flying surface you are far better off changing the camber in addition to just changing its angle of attack.

With blown surfaces like rudders and elevators, you might gain even more control authority by changing the camber (having a flapped control surface) as well as making it all moving. The ultimate would be a leading edge device, a trailing edge device AND the ability to change AOA.

However you are looking at heavy servos and heavier structures which make this option less viable. As the weight of the tail increases I suppose to some extent you have to have more powerful controls to get snappiness in aerobatics....

Exactly my point DestructiveTester, well said you must admit however that most of what the Brits and the Yanks knew was from German technology gained after the war.

Can you imagine the German jet/rocket engineers placed in Boeing or other US operation and proposing their ideas in 1941?
They would have been tossed out on their collective asses.
Not team players - impossible ideas - preposterous, etc..
Please , no "we won the war stuff"---
study your history first and see WHY we won .
And I am forever grateful we did .

I don't know whether the amazing advances of the Miles program were attributable to German research or not. The Germans were pioneers in many areas of aerodynamics e.g. flying wings - are you saying they came up with all-flying surfaces too (before the UK and the US)?

Who was really first ?
good question
As far asI know --the Stealth bomber was influenced by the flying wing brought here from Germany in the 40's
Our first jet engine was a sorry thing derived from Whittle's engine --
If you back to the 1910-20's -there were full flying surfaces - the Fokker (Tony Fokker ,Dutch?) had a flying fin -
so apparantly lots of stuff may have been first done by someone who screwed it up -then later on- someone else picked up th idea and got it all together.
To me , after having worked in US industry -- the one point about US industry is that most companies don't want to be first in or last in ,on something new.
Unless it is a cost plus sponsered project.- then you just pissed away the money as slowly as possible.
It's called CYA-- and I hate it.
I was told many times " oh better cover yourself on that or you could loose your job "- I always felt that if I had to spend time covering my ass - the job wasn't worth having.
I always felt the aircraft innovators of Germany must have felt the same way -
and they probably had a lot more to lose