Back in the day, when FAA employees outnumbered amateur airplane builders, a government inspector would do a “pre-closure” inspection on every part of your homebuilt, then return for a pre-first-flight inspection and again every year thereafter. The quality of these inspectors varied. Some were skilled A&Ps who almost always found a discrepancy that you had overlooked or had some useful comment or suggestion to offer. Those you welcomed. A few, however, barely knew one end of an airplane from the other.
Tall Tales for Airplane Tails
Key Takeaways:
- Stabilators, or all-flying tails, were once popular in aircraft design for their claimed aerodynamic efficiency, utilizing a single-piece surface controlled by an anti-servo tab.
- Despite theoretical advantages, early stabilator designs faced significant practical issues, including destructive flutter, stalling during landing (often due to being undersized), and undesirable pitch oscillations or "hunting."
- The article highlights the unpredictable nature of aircraft design, where features successful in one context (like the author's homebuilt) could lead to unforeseen problems or fail to translate effectively to other aircraft configurations.
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