I wonder why these futuristic planes have foward canards as opposed to horizontal stabilizers?
It's not that futuristic except for the rockets... this design first flew in 1975; very popular kit design.
The advantage of a canard forward of the CG is that it'll stall before the wing if angle of attack is wrong for a given airspeed, so the nose'll drop almost before you know it, just enough for the wing to get a grip again. They're very hard to stall, and tend to float down steeply but slowly if you manage to get things screwed up despite that.
Posted: Sun Nov 13, 2005 6:36 am