I think I might have contributed to the small/big tail debate a cupla years or more ago. Anyway, Mine has a large horizontal stab while maintaining the same span elevator. One of the two options the local authority at the time recommended. The builder chose this ‘cos he didn’t want to cut the horizontal stab and rebuild with a full span elevator. You can just see the knuckles of the extra 25% span he added on each side.

Whatever, mine flies well, and the only attempt I have had at flying a small tail was with Bill Harrelson, who could only have wondered where the !@*^ this !@#&*^% Aussie got a licence, such was the high level of PIO exhibited. (I reverted to camera duty).

The end result it seems to me, is if you have a large tail, keep it, and if you have a small tail, keep it.

I don’t see the point of major surgery when it probably won’t produce a result worth worrying about.

 

Anyway, lads and lasses, last year (May) I did a solo circumnavigation of continental Australia. ‘Cos the Wx at the south west corner was bad on the day I departed Perth, I had to cut inland by about a 100 NM before heading south to join the coast at an old whaling station port called Albany – like New York’s Albany in spelling. That plus a cupla other track shorts, and time limitation on the Maintenance Release to the Annual, I wasn’t all that happy with the outcome, so I did it again this year, and indeed satisfied the intent by being over water all the way. Pretty much like Matty Flinders except he was in a sailing ship and didn’t have three GPS’s. Well he did, but they were called sextants in those days.

 

I attach a copy of my GPS Google Earth track plot and trip data.

 

Ciao for now

 

Dom Crain

 

VH-CZJ