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Rudder Placement (hyrdrodynamic Q.)
By:David Walker
Date: 6/19/1999, 4:20 pm

I am mounting a small trim tab to the rear of my yak to compensate for a minor tendency to steer to port. It will be attached to boat with a friction hinge so as to basically be fixed in place at a set angle but also to allow for adjustments as needed. Anyway, because the rear of my kayak is angled (i.e., if looking at it from the side....I may not be saying this clearly but the stem does not rise perpendicularly from the water but angles backwards somewhat as many kayaks do) and because hinge would attach to the trim tab a little bit behind the most forward part of the trim tab (because the lower part of the trim tab projects forward to follow stem line), angling trim tab to right would send the part of the trim tab which is behind hinge to the right and would send the smaller part of trim tab which ends up being in front of hinge joint to the left of the stem. Both the front and the back should still be pushing boat in the direction I want it to go but I am just wondering if there are any consequences of this which I should be aware of. I believe this issue may be called something like balanced vs unbalanced rudder design in nautical engineering (but I may be mistaken).

This is not easy for me to explain on "paper" but if anyone understands what I'm saying and has any comments, great.

Thanks, Dave

Messages In This Thread

Rudder Placement (hyrdrodynamic Q.)
David Walker -- 6/19/1999, 4:20 pm
Re: Rudder Placement (hyrdrodynamic Q.)
Randy Knauff -- 6/21/1999, 10:00 pm