Manual to Electric Aileron Trim Advice

[N743RV]

I'm contemplating replacing my manual aileron trim with the electric version in my completed and flying a 7A. Does anybody have any feedback on how difficult this will be? Is it a minor operation or a major procedure?

Bob Cowan, N743RV, 550 hrs
IO-360 M1B, CS Hartzel, AFS 5400

 

[Tankerpilot75]

I did this

It’s not an easy conversion but it’s definitely doable. My conversion took about two weeks of long days (I wasn’t the original builder).

Here’s my recommendation:
1. Mount the trim motor on the shelf under the vertical stabilizer and run a push/pull cable from the trim motor to trim tab. This approach mirrors your current manual trim setup and keeps you from having to mess with horizontal stabilizer to mount the trim motor.
2. Mount a trim indicator on your panel so you can see visually where your trim is positioned.
3. At the same time install electric aileron trim and also install a trim indicator for it.
4. I also installed Pat Hatch’s Ultimate Trim Relay Board (UTRB) to allow both pilots to input trim without canceling each other’s input I.e. instructor inputs. Using the UTRB also facilitated adding radio, flaps, autopilot and transponder functions to my sticks.
5. I also installed the Tosten military style grips when I did this conversion.

The results were well worth the time, expense and effort it took.

 

[pjc]

I'm contemplating replacing my manual aileron trim with the electric version in my completed and flying a 7A. Does anybody have any feedback on how difficult this will be? Is it a minor operation or a major procedure?

Bob Cowan, N743RV, 550 hrs
IO-360 M1B, CS Hartzel, AFS 5400

Our own Paul Dye did this on an RV-3 ... and describes the effort here ...

https://www.kitplanes.com/free-flight-30/

Doesn?t sound too bad to me as a retrofit. (My own RV-6 has essentially the setup Paul describes which we installed during construction. Works great, highly recommend the small servo and tab.)

Peter