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I've decided to build an aluminum trim tab for my biplane. I haven't done much aluminum riveted construction so i'll need some ideas/comments here.
So far i have made a piece of channel that sits in the horizontal stab to form the box the tab sits in. Its rear face is angled 30 degrees from vertical to let the piano hinged tab run both up/down. I'll try to post a photo on this soon.
Next i made a drawing of the sheet metal blank to be cut out and bent into the tab skin. I've looked at some RV builders and some factory tabs and have a couple of options/questions here.
1) do i bend the tab's sides out of the same skin sheet? or will i make the ends seperate pieces and rivet the skin to them. I'm leaning towards the latter....though my first drawing shows the one piece tab with folded ends.
2) I see some tabs do not have a seperate spar. They overlap at the front face and rivet to the piano hinge, which seems fairly sturdy with those 3 layers.I see the RV's use a seperate spar piece the skins rivet to.
I have a factory tab i intend to take the control horn off of anda MAC trim servo i thought i'd mount in the elevator to run the tab.
Edited by: bigblackmastiff
So far i have made a piece of channel that sits in the horizontal stab to form the box the tab sits in. Its rear face is angled 30 degrees from vertical to let the piano hinged tab run both up/down. I'll try to post a photo on this soon.
Next i made a drawing of the sheet metal blank to be cut out and bent into the tab skin. I've looked at some RV builders and some factory tabs and have a couple of options/questions here.
1) do i bend the tab's sides out of the same skin sheet? or will i make the ends seperate pieces and rivet the skin to them. I'm leaning towards the latter....though my first drawing shows the one piece tab with folded ends.
![20080613_071740_rvfold.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/788/788e59d9d387b465dbcbbb58468d39f3.jpg)
![20080613_072101_rvend.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/06c/06ceb0a5b4339fb867317dfb37fa6db0.jpg)
2) I see some tabs do not have a seperate spar. They overlap at the front face and rivet to the piano hinge, which seems fairly sturdy with those 3 layers.I see the RV's use a seperate spar piece the skins rivet to.
![20080613_071431_rv1.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/2d9/2d9f4a4cb9a83989dbd69d87c789b333.jpg)
I have a factory tab i intend to take the control horn off of anda MAC trim servo i thought i'd mount in the elevator to run the tab.
![20080613_070756_tabsized.jpg](https://proxy.imagearchive.com/9e5/9e5e70cde0b998313648bd74d1172aa0.jpg)