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I, too, have had runaway trim, but it was not from age, as Rusty's was.
The first incident was my fault, well at least I initiated it: On my very first flight, I put my hand over the top of the hat on my stick, and unknowingly depressed the trim switch. Within a second, it ran to the stops--we were departing down the runway when it happened... I solved the problem by putting an aluminum collar below the hat--I never put my hand above the collar. Additionally, I put pots inline for all of the trim functions to lower the voltage of the actuators, thus lowering the speed of the control movements.
The second instance of the runaway was after the installation of a new Mac trim switch. The nice decal which you put on the face of the switch was too close to the rocker arm, and when the switch was manually pushed, the adhesive decal kept the switch actuated. I took a razor blade after that, and cleaned up the clearance on all of my switch decals.
Thanks, Rusty, for bringing this to our attention. I have placed a blue flag on my trim switch breaker circuit for immediate shut down. Of course, the problem is, what do you do if the trim runs to the stops before you disconnect it?
David Jones, Pecatonica, IL
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