Elevator position in cruise

[Slick Nick]

1991 201 MSE.

In cruise, with the plane properly trimmed “hands off” at around 150 knots, I looked back and noticed the elevator horns were sticking up into the slipstream a bit. Not sure if this is normal, or abnormal, honestly it’s the first time I’ve looked back there during flight. C of G was fairly forward, just me on board and about 20 gallons of fuel. Has anyone else seen that position before? Again, not sure it’s abnormal, but just something I noticed. Photo attached. 
 

 

[EricJ]

Totally normal and common.   There've been a few threads about this in the past as well.

[KSMooniac]

Yep, totally normal.

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[Slick Nick]

Awesome thanks fellas!

[Fritz1]

interesting, my horns are pointing down in the Bravo in cruise, this may be different between a short body and a long body, I even know a guy with an Eagle that put little fairings at the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer in front of the horns, position may also be dependent on rigging of elevator bungees

[PT20J]

1 hour ago, Fritz1 said:

interesting, my horns are pointing down in the Bravo in cruise, this may be different between a short body and a long body, I even know a guy with an Eagle that put little fairings at the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer in front of the horns, position may also be dependent on rigging of elevator bungees

M20Ks and later have a bob weight and variable downspring instead of trim assist bungees used in earlier models and trim in flight with the elevator trailing edge up.

[blaine beaven]

Next flight, throw some gold bars behind the back seat (or something else heavy) and see what you get for a deflection. I find on my 78J that the elevator position depends on how the plane is loaded. 

[BravoWhiskey]

Like @Fritz1 mine point slightly down on the Bravo.  All the rigging and trim is good so I think nothing of it.  First time I noticed it I tried playing around with the trim… ended up being a waste of time.  It seems to change slightly depending on weight and balance and speed but only slightly.  

[JimK]

The elevator horns on my Ovation looked like Slick Nick’s at cruise when I bought the airplane 5 years ago accept they were even higher (approximately 8 degrees above the horizontal stab surface).  I also thought that seemed wrong so I called Mooney and they connected me with a very sharp and experienced customer service engineer.  He said that having the horns high on an Ovation (and likely other models) is normal but said Mooney tries to adjust the trim tabs on the aft edge of the elevators so the elevators are at least 2 degrees high.  He said it wouldn’t hurt anything if mine were higher than that but, if it bothered me I could very carefully bend the trim tabs an extremely small amount to make the elevator more closely align with the horizontal stab but not to go too far because they should always stick up at least 2 degrees in order to be aerodynamically stable.

[Flyler]

Mine looks like that on my 79 J. To me, it looks like a wing that is helping to lift the airplane.