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 (all-flying tails) were designed for improved aerodynamic efficiency but often presented significant challenges in practice, including dangerous flutter and stalling issues in early designs like the Piper Comanche and Cessna Cardinal.
- The author's personal experience with his homebuilt *Melmoth* demonstrated the unpredictable nature of stabilators, encountering issues like icing-induced oscillations and "hunting" that necessitated design changes.
- Aircraft design is complex and iterative; features that worked well on the author's custom *Melmoth* (e.g., a T-tail stabilator) did not always translate successfully to commercial designs like the Piper Lance, highlighting the inherent trade-offs.
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