A tailplane, also known as horizontal
stabilizer, is a small
lifting surface located behind the main lifting surfaces of a
fixed-wing aircraft as well as other non-fixed wing aircraft such as
helicopters and
gyroplanes. However, not all fixed-wing aircraft have tailplanes, such as those configured with
canards (where the "tail-plane" is located in front), flying-wing aircraft, where there is no tail, and
v-tail aircraft where the fin/rudder and tail-plane are combined to form two diagonal surfaces in a V layout. The tailplane serves three purposes:Equilibrium An aeroplane must be in balance longitudinally in order to fly. This means that the net effect of all the
forces acting on the aeroplane produces no overall
pitching moment about the
centre of gravity. Without a tailplane there would be only one combination of speed and centre of gravity position for which this requirement was met. The tailplane provides a balancing force to maintain equilibrium for different speeds and centre of gravity positions. Because the tailplane is located some distance from the centre of gravity, even the small amount of lift it produces can generate a large pitching moment at the centre of gravity.
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