Rudder tab

[Colin]

I don't think I have ever seen an aileron tab. That's interesting.

From my mechanic, you are not meant to even bend the tab without being an A&P. He never charged to do it, but he said it was messing with the flight controls and that's not something operators are allowed to do.

[Steve]

I don't think I have ever seen an aileron tab. That's interesting.

From my mechanic, you are not meant to even bend the tab without being an A&P. He never charged to do it, but he said it was messing with the flight controls and that's not something operators are allowed to do.

That is quite true, bending fixed trim tabs is not one of the "preventive maintenance" items that pilots are permitted to perform. Having said that, I'll wager that most adjustments to fixed trim tabs done in GA aircraft do not have an A&P sign-off in the logs. Mine have never been adjusted...

Steve

[astaib]

Thanks

[Lou]

I checked the list of "elementary maintenance" in Canada. Trim tab adjustment is not there.

[Karl]

Ideally you need an engineer to check all the flight control rigging to ensure they are all correct, flaps miss rigged and of course rudder can cause the ball to be not centered.
Once you are sure the basic settings are OK, then flight check the aircraft and get your engineer to adjust the tab IAW the maintenance manual.
Remember that it will only ever be right at one power setting.

[Antoine]

My 2 cents as an ex DA40 jockey! There are two elements that cause uncoordinated flight and a ball off center. bending of the trim tab is one and the fact that the nose wheel isn't straight is the other. See the thread "corked nose wheel" for this matter.

[BkFlyer]

I had my rudder trim tab off for 3 years without any issues.

It was removed because we removed our wheel fairings and the trim became out of balance. An A&P finally replaced the tab in August and I don’t see much of a difference (without wheel pants).

Ok, I did notice less ball bouncing during light turbulence. However, when the A&P replaced the rudder tab, they also replaced “very stretched out” rudder cables. So I feel like the total rudder rebuild is likely the main reason for less yaw moments in turbulence.

[Antoine]

I had my rudder trim tab off for 3 years without any issues.
It was removed because we removed our wheel fairings and the trim became out of balance.

This says that your nose wheel was not pointing straight. The trim tab was bent to compensate.
If your nose wheel is straight, removing its fairing has no effect on trim

[BkFlyer]

This says that your nose wheel was not pointing straight. The trim tab was bent to compensate.
If your nose wheel is straight, removing its fairing has no effect on trim

Interesting. I’m familiar with the corked nosewheel posts. I do know it is straight now because I have plenty of go pro footage of the underside. But I don’t know if I was corked with the fairing on becuase it’s pre-GoPro.

The nose fairing was split into pieces by a chunk of ice frozen to the ground. I actually just found a A&P at KMGJ who seems to be skilled at carbon fiber repair and specifically fixing heavily damaged noise fairing sections so maybe we’ll know in a few months!