Originally Posted by
rotorfan
A well-known lawyer in my city died in a takeoff crash, post-maintenance. They found that, the more he trimmed nose-up, the more the plane nosed down. I believe it was a Baron, and I understand the elevators can be installed on opposite sides on the type, so the trim worked in reverse. Due to a post above, I will now conduct a full-trim exercise on the ground on my preflight checks, too.
To be honest, I do a full trim check just to see that a reasonable amount of trim movement happens. But I cannot be sure that the amount of trim deflection that happens is not excessive(or not enough). It is really just a general 'seems reasonable' check in terms of amount of trim wheel movement. if one is checking for proper deflection direction, only a small amount of trim wheel input may be necessary to compare the tab movement direction in the proper direction as compared to what was seen a few seconds earlier. In reality, I don't plan to carry around a protractor and type certificate values for all the aircraft I am flying. I can see a value for a post-maintenance check flight.
But I still don't see why the C206 was leaping into the air. I would expect that the tab was quite far from the aligned with elevator position to do that. That said, I have never flown a 206. While elevator trim tabs on the Cessna's I have flown are normally a little bit off of being completely aligned with the elevator when set to the takeoff position, one would think that if it was close to or at the aligned with the elevator position for takeoff, there would only be a small but not unreasonable amount of control column force required. I could see a situation where mis-rigging cause an erroneous cockpit indication where the pilot thought the tab was set for takeoff but was not.