Question - Regarding Canard Pushers...

On Fri, 08 Aug 2003 09:21:47 -0500, Rick Pellicciotti wrote:

I won't dispute that there have been some accidents in canard airplanes
during aerobatic flight. I am confident that I could find an equal
number of accidents that happened during aerobatic flight in most any
other make and model, high-performance homebuilt. Flown properly,
aerobatics can be done in canard airplanes. They are very low drag
airplanes and great care should be exercised in the vertical mode. I
have done most any "fun" type manuvers you can name in a veri-eze and a
long-ez. I have rolled a velocity a couple of times. They are all
delightful flying airplanes.

That said, the velocity is not really suited for that as much as it is
touring. I don't have any experience with the SQ-2000 except close
examination of the prototype on the ground. The wing area seems a
little small for the load it is said to carry.

Rick Pellicciotti
http://www.belleairetours.com

Sure, guys have accidents for all kinds of reasons during aerobatic
flights. Mess up in a loop or roll at low altitude, and that will get you
no matter what aircraft you are flying. Or get in a spin at too low an
altitude and you are toast. But a good aerobatic aircraft should not have
an unrecoverable stall or spin characteristic. So you can do aerobatics
safely if you fly at a high enough altitude to recover from a spin.

My concern about doing aerobatics in canards is that you quite likely have
an unrecoverable deep stall mode lurking to bite you, if you ever manage
to stall the main wing, so you have added one more way to kill yourself,
even if you fly at "safe" altitude. And that isn't even mentioning the
issue of low drag which you alluded to. You really, really need to watch
what you are doing any time you put the nose very far below the horizon in
something as slick as most canard designs.

Rolls don't concern me too much, as they don't need to involve large pitch
attitudes, or high angles of attack. The thought of someone building a
canard to go out and do vertical type manoeuvres with scares the heck out
of me though.

Good luck, and fly safe.

--
Kevin Horton RV-8 (finishing kit)
Ottawa, Canada
http://go.phpwebhosting.com/~khorton/rv8/

Kevin Horton wrote:

Rolls don't concern me too much, as they don't need to involve large pitch
attitudes, or high angles of attack. The thought of someone building a
canard to go out and do vertical type manoeuvres with scares the heck out
of me though.

Perhaps Dick Rutan did a disservice in the early EZ days by flying
demos that included vertical loops. His routine sold plenty of plans
though. As a Long EZ flyer, I agree that the EZ and its variants are
definitely not aerobatic mounts. Even rolls in an EZ could bite the
inexperienced pilot because the roll rate is inherently slow and the
plane is so clean. A reasonably high entry speed is a must and full
rudder deflection in the direction of the roll will get the plane over
much quicker. As for loops in an EZ, don't even think about it unless
you have oodles of aerobatic experience and have talked to someone
like Dick Rutan about it first.

David O -- http://www.AirplaneZone.com