X-Mozilla-Keys:                                                                                 
Bill Freeman wrote:

Perry Mick wrote:

snips.

Landing gears need to be better than 4 G's I would say.
Six G's minimum and ten for hard landings.
That makes that kind of end-of-the-canard landing gear
too heavy. Nice try Burt but no cigar on that one :-)

Paul Lamar

Don't blame Burt, the Dragonfly is not his design.

--
Perry J. Mick
Mick Duckt N7XR
http://www.mickaircraft.com/duckt.htm

No, but the Q2 was (I think) and the Dragonfly was patterned after the
Q2. They both had main wheels mounted on the canard wing tips
and they both had the same problems.

Q2 was **NOT** Burt's design.  It was designed by Gary Legair, a
Canadian.  The design was bought by two guys at Mojave, and they
produced the kits.  A scary, dangerous design.  Had a friend crash one
after an engine failure a few months ago here at IXD.  Pilot and pax OK,
AC scratched.  Fortunetely, I had urged him to practice engine out
landings, and he had returned wide-eyed after his first one.  The Q2
has too little wing, the Dragonfly has 50% more wing.  The Dragonfly
is a *much* better design, but like all of the canards with the wheels at
the tips, absolutely cannot be bounced on landing.  If you bounce, you
must be hair trigger primed to instantly add full power and start a go-around.
If the runway is long enough, you can climb to 20 ft, reduce power and
land again.  The problem is excessive springiness in the gear legs, throws
the AC back into the air if bounced.

Burt designed the Q1, and this had no problem with canard breakage or
bouncing, since the stiffness of the canard was OK for the extreme light
weight of this bird.  The same guy that crashed the Q2 (converted to trigear)
also has a Q1, which has been fine, other than pretty darned underpowered.

Bill

Yes but the Dragon Fly was patterned on the  Q2 which  in turn was
patterned 
on the Q1 which you admit Burt did design. Then it was Burt's idea to
put the wheels on the end of the canard. Just because it don't scale
is rather ironical given the name of Burt's outfit is  "Scaled" :-)

Paul Lamar

The Aircraft Rotary Engine Newsletter.              Powered by Linux.

http://home.earthlink.net/~rotaryeng/            http://www.linux.org