Monty Roberts wrote:

Paul,

I agree with your sentiment about an air racer with a Mazda engine. I would love to work on a race plane. I sure do wish somebody with some dollars would get interested and put together a design team :-). I was thinking about a canard race plane recently. It occurred to me that if you wanted to change the airfoils on a long EZ type aircraft and sacrifice the low landing speed, so that the airframe is no longer the limiting factor on top speed. Then put a turbo 20B where the passenger sits, and a drive shaft/gearbox arrangement like the E-racer you could make one heck of a race plane. There should be plenty of room for heat exchangers in the original engine bay and strakes. Surely you could be competitive in some of the lower classes. It would land like a bat out of hell though.

The plane you have presented would certainly have better prop efficiency and higher performance. I guess it all depends on how much you want to spend.

Monty Roberts
RMI
1795 Berry St.
Fayetteville, AR 72701
tmrbrts@swbell.net

Unfortunately Reno did not happen this year. Klause had his Varieze entered so
we perhaps could see what a canard could do. In theory a Canard would have less
drag in the turns. 

The induced drag coefficient is equal to Lift Coefficient ^2 /(pi X Aspect ratio)
You double the lift coefficient in a two G turn so the induced drag is
four times higher. Canards generally have higher aspect ratios than RV's
so the drag in the turns would be way less. The other thing Canards have going
for them is trim drag. No down force on the tail so that increment of induced
drag is eliminated. In fact that incremental tail drag is added to
the additional lift the wing must generate to cancel the tail down force.
For this reason a dedicated conventional tractor Reno racer design should 
have a somewhat longer aft fuselage and smaller tail surfaces to make
it faster in the turns.
 
Paul Lamar
 
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