REBUILDING THE HORIZONTAL STABILIZER

 

Unlike a “stabilator” a horizontal stabilizer is not a balanced control.  When attempting to rebuild a horizontal stabilizer one must be cautious as not to allow it to twist or “oil can”.  In many ways,  the horizontal stabilizer is a smaller wing, but, not in total.  Where the wing's responsibility is the overall stability of the aircraft, the horizontal stabilizer is responsible for the vertical elements.  There are stabilizer configurations which differ in aircraft designs.  A perfect example would be a slight dihedral to affect a more positive stability to the rear portion to the aircraft.  It was also discovered early on that aircraft capable of supersonic speeds did not function well  when using this stabilizer configuration.  It was discovered the horizontal stabilator design fared far better.  Some aircraft possess a very extreme stabilator design. Such design could be observed in a high performance fighter type aircraft.  These controls often have “negative dihedral” more properly known as “anhedral”.  This design configuration dampens out positive stability necessary for this type aircraft's operation.   Another consideration in rebuilding this control, if the the stabilizer were to possess a twist (which would serve no purpose), it would create an induced drag effecting a reduced airspeed to the aircraft.  Further, the lift produced by this control is from the bottom side rather than the top   (a reversed airfoil).

 

If caution is not taken in the process of rebuilding this control, and each side is not exactly parallel from one another, the aircraft will experience a differential of lift in this area.  This condition would compromise the overall stability of the aircraft.

 

RJ Dauhn Aircraft addresses all of these flight characteristics in order to secure you, the customer, a perfect job.