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Stabilator


A stabilator, more frequently all-moving tail or all-flying tail, is a fully movable aircraft stabilizer. It serves the usual functions of longitudinal stability, control and stick force requirements otherwise performed by the separate fixed and movable parts of a conventional horizontal stabilizer. Apart from a higher efficiency at high Mach number, it is a useful device for changing the aircraft balance within wide limits, and for mastering the stick forces.

Stabilator (a portmanteau of "stabilizer-elevator") is also known in aircraft terminology as all moving tailplane, all-movable tail(plane), all-moving stabilizer, all flying tail(plane), full-flying stabilizer, flying tail and slab tailplane.

Because it involves a moving balanced surface, a stabilator can allow the pilot to generate a given pitching moment with a lower control force. Due to the high forces involved in tail balancing loads, stabilators are designed to pivot about their aerodynamic center (near the tail's mean quarter-chord). This is the point at which the pitching moment is constant regardless of the angle of attack, and thus any movement of the stabilator can be made without added pilot effort. However, to be certified by the appropriate regulatory agency an airplane must show an increasing resistance to an increasing pilot input (movement). To provide this resistance, stabilators on small aircraft contain an anti-servo tab (usually acting also as a trim tab) that deflects in the same direction as the stabilator, thus providing an aerodynamic force resisting the pilot's input. General aviation aircraft with stabilators include the Piper Cherokee and the Cessna 177.

All-flying tailplanes were used on many pioneer aircraft and the popular Morane-Saulnier G, H and L monoplanes from France as well as the early Fokker Eindecker monoplane and Halberstadt D.II biplane fighters from Germany all flew with them, although at the cost of stability - none of these aircraft, with the possible exception of the biplane Halberstadts, could be flown hands off.


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