Crooked horizontal stabilizer

[1avidflyer 1983]

A while back, someone had a post about their newly purchased horizontal stabilizer being out of kilter with the wings.  I looked for the post so I could answer to it again, but didn't find it right away.  Anyway, it that other post, I said I would have to take a look at my Avid MK IV to see if it lined up or not.  It doesn't.  And the plane flys fine.  Here are a couple of pics.   JImChuk

[wypaul 448]

Does that vent work ok for you Jim?  I tried one like that and fuel was sucked out but it was not tapered into the wind, didn't think of that.

[1avidflyer 1983]

I have a valve on the vent line, so it only is open when I want it to be.  Like when I'm doing my preflight, and then any air in the header tank can go up the vent line and out.  If I open the valve while in flight, I will see fuel getting sucked out.  JImChuk

[Yamma-Fox 403]

Jim I snuck in your hangar, folded the wings on the plane in front and used a cloning machine to increase your fleet there...

 

Now it looks like the storage deck on an aircraft carrier 

[1avidflyer 1983]

I was wondering whose tracks those were in the snow.... Neat.   I better not let the wife see it, she will start asking questions like, How many airplanes do you have?      JImChuk

[CoClimber 33]

I took some eyeball measurements of that photo. It looks like the stab is off ~1 degree.  Because the horizontal tail is pushing down in flight, the angle will cause a horizontal force that will push the tail to the left.  However, at 1 degree, that force will be 1.7% of the total force the tail generates.  In other words, completely unnoticeable. 

[akflyer 1427]

Mine is the same way.  When I rebuilt it I made certain the tail post was straight before and after welding.  When I bolted on the horizontal stab I flipped the struts every way I could to get the H.stab to be 90° to the vert stab but it was not gonna happen.  I finally bolted it on telling myself that at some point I would make new struts to fix it.  I think it is more of a visual thing than something that really effects the flying.

After talking with a few guys about the factory jigs that were used to make these planes, I am pretty impressed that anything bolts up square.  Making multiple wood jigs for production type runs just doesn't hold tolerances the way I would like to see them held.