Elevator/Stabilizer Tuft Testing for Gap Seal

[jaredyates]

About a year ago my friend Alan and I did some test flights to see if the airflow pattern changed on the horizontal stabilizer after sealing the hinge gap. I was having some trouble with the video files, but thanks to a new video editing software I was finally able to finish the video, and it is here:

https://youtu.be/NB0kh3Z4OVM

There has been some discussion about the effectiveness of various tail mods intended to improve elevator capability at forward CGs, including gap seals, VGs, and the profiled ribs. Watch the video and see what you think, but I can't see much difference before and after the gap seal. I certainly couldn't feel any difference in the stick.
In all of the idle thrust cases, the airflow separates right at the hinge line. The wing is not fully stalled when this happens, which means to me that there isn't enough elevator effectiveness to fully stall the wing. This is with two people in the front two seats, and nothing else in the plane. 50 pounds of ballast in the baggage area would probably do much more to improve the elevator effectiveness than most of the external mods.

[JimParker256]

I could be wrong, but it looked to me like the airflow was a good bit smoother at the leading edge of the elevator, even pretty far into the stall. It would be a lot easier to tell, if the video was edited to show the before/after sequences for each flight regime back-to-back, instead of having to wait through all of the BEFORE videos to see the AFTER video. Maybe since you have the source video, you can do the side-by-side comparisons and see if it's worth re-posting...