Mxsmanic wrote:
What I see in the literature seems to vary between warnings against
spending too much trim or flying with trim tabs, and not ever trimming
the aircraft at all. So how much and when should I trim?

Trim to releave control pressure for any given attitude that you plan
to maintain for more than a few seconds.

Another problem I have: How do you remember where you set the trim?
I know you can look, and I know that you can guess if the aircraft is
behaving strangely, but how do you keep track of where you last set
the trim? Each time I set it I tend to forget about it until some
important moment when I'm already busy with other things.

Elevator trim: You don't have to keep track of it. You should just feel
when it's needed. Set it to neutral when procedures call for it -
before takeoff, that's about the only time you need to worry about its
exact position, except for big airliners, which I believe have to have
trim reset to 0 before landing as well. If you can't relax your hand on
the yoke because your input is needed to correct pitch at any given
time -- time to trim. Ailerons and rudder trims are a bit different.
Those are mostly used to keep coordinated flight once straight and
level.


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Ed.
PP-ASEL, PA-28-161, FRG