It does.
I looked at this thing at OSH. It's pretty slick. The ECO uses R/C servos to move a fairly good sized trim tab attached to an aileron and the elevator. I'd estimate it's about an inch or so by six inches. The servo mounts inside the control surface and moves the tab, the tab "flies" the control surface. My understanding is that the whole assembly comes as a unit, you cut a hole and screw or pop rivet it in place. Really nice setup, I had some real reservations about it until I saw it. Someone was using their noggin.
But yeah, their web guys aren't quite as up to speed as their autopilot guys, that's for sure.
I looked at this thing too. I guess the best thing I can say about it is you get what you pay for. TruTrac being a really good company, I can't say anything bad about this product but I do have to say that I have been flying RC planes for a very long time. Seen just about all of the different brand servos and they all fail at some point. It may not be a complete failure but they lose accuracy with use, metal gears strip (forget plastic gears), etc.
I'm sure this product can be used to ease cross country VFR flying and help with pilot workload, but I would have a hard time putting my life on the line with these small servos during an IFR flight.
YMMV
Take it for what's it worth = $0.00
Yeah, I thought about the longevity of the servos... but you could replace both of them annually and not even feel the hit to your wallet. I don't think they're targeting the upper end of the market (heavy duty IFR flying) with this, though.
As chief pilot for a company developing an autopilot that drove the trim tabs, I asked the question: "What loads are acceptable on the controls in cruise flight if a trim tab runs to full deflection?" I never received a straight answer.
I would like to see a video posted of the same red plane flying at cruise speed with that small tab deflected to the limit. I'm not being a smart alleck, I really have no idea what forces will be generated in the scenario.
I did have one of the engineers run the elevator trim all the way down before takeoff doing a software upgrade. I missed it on my checklist and attempted to depart. Had to abort do to excessive forces on the controls. It was a heavier plane than an RV, so the comparison may not be valid.
Since you are in the development phase before release for sale, can you test this and report back? Thanks in advance for your consideration.
it is controllable, even the elevator.
I think that the answer is, it depends......
I had a situation in which my elevator trim was in the full up mode on my RV-10 during take off. It was darn impossible to get the nose down with the stick until I realized what the problem was and corrected it. I was very thankful that day that I had installed an AOA.
Lesson Learned: visually validate on preflight, since the Ray Allen sensor gave an incorrect value, then I corrected it inappropriately per the sensor reading.