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Old 6th Feb 2010, 17:39
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NGjockey
 
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Absolutely. But even with all the mentioned prerequisites fulfilled I'm almost always getting this right-wing-down indication on the yoke. In fact, I can remember only one certain aircraft in our fleet (and we have a bunch of them) that showed a LEFT-wing-down indication, but that ship must have been bent or rigged the wrong way.

So it's either me constantly mistrimming the aircraft, or Boeing's statement that a correctly trimmed airplane should result in an approximately neutral wheel is not completely thought-out.

I've had the pleasure of flying high performance turboprops for a long time, and that made me very sensitive as to trimming an aircraft. Every now and then the autopilot would quit, and we had to fly manually for days on end. Nowadays I like to klick George off for a few seconds after reaching our cruise level, just to get an idea what the flight controls are doing, and that's when I noticed this strange need for a little right wing down aileron trim most of the time.

There is one thing that would back my theory that it is a torque related problem: When we start our descent and the thrust goes to idle, the airplane does not keep the wings level any longer on a straigth path. Since the speed doesn't change that much during the transition from cruise to descent this can only be caused by two factors: A change of the AOA and/or decreasing torque due to the thrust reduction. But then again, the AOA wouldn't change that much if speed doesn't change, right?

Which leaves only torque as the culprit...

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