Rich Harrison wrote:
From the uAvonics website and I can atest after looking at and holding the Tail Beacon, there may be a minimal difference in weight between the existing taillight and the TailBeacon.
Does installation of tailBeacon require rudder balancing?
tailBeacon weighs 80grams/2.9oz/0.176lbs including 6″ of 22AWG. The rebalancing of the rudder will depend on the weight difference between the existing light and the tailBeacon. In many cases, the weight difference is less than 0.5oz.
Now replacing the rudder cap with a new one that might be heaver then the original might make your AI say we need to remove the rudder and rebalanced. It will be up to your AI if you need to remove your rudder and rebalance it.
Rich,
Great points...
My A+P, who is also a certified installer from SkyBeacon (Uavionix) is telling me he has to check that, as the differnet weight will affect the performance of the rudder...
The skeptic in me tells me the plane has 8,000 hours on it and is bent six ways to Sunday from 43 years of flying, and an once here or there will not matter on this particular airplane and the blazing 85 knots I can get out of it!
However, we will do what is right, dot the i's and cross the T's to make sure we are in full compliance!
He also advised me to get the TAIL BEACON as we just put on these new wingtips and the SkyBeacon would require some modification to them...more simple to put it into the tail position, and probably less likely it would be damaged or STOLEN. (not even sure if they are able to be stolen and used again, but there is a guy at our airport that keeps warning of us of ADSB thieves...whatever! We don't have fences or any security systems - but then we have NEVER had anything stolen or vandalized either.
Mike N714AJ
