Hi Paul,

      I'm not an aeronautical engineer, so I truly don't know the answer
   to this question and it's bugged me for a long time, but now that you
   have some interest in the canard (I think it was a Cozy you were looking
   at, but I don't have the specific email now, so I'm not sure) perhaps
   you'll roll this one over in the back of your mind in-between all the
   other questions you consider.  Is there any practical, simple, efficient
   way to put flaps on a canard airplane?
      The prevailing belief is just to "keep it simple" and land pretty
   fast.  The adage "When you fly fast, you land fast" still seems an
   impregnable wall, but does it have to be that way especially on
   composite aircraft where damned near any structural form and light
   weight is possible?  Everyone says "It's just too complicated, but is it
   really?  Looking at it through rather foggy glasses, I can see that you
   would dramatically increase the potential for flutter, but are the
   mechanics and dynamics of it as tough as we hear for aircraft that will
   always likely be in the 200 to 300 knot range for the vast majority of
   designs?  If that nut could be cracked, it looks like the canard could
   be a very fast heavy lifter that was also very forgiving.  Any thoughts?

   Robin

   Flaps cause a pitch down moment on any aircraft as they move the center
   of lift aft on the wing.

   The canard  Beech Star ship swept the canard back for flight
   and forward for landing with flaps to counter the pitching moment.
   It can be achieved if you mount the canard on rails and move it back
   and fourth.

   The energy in a crash is the square of the crash speed.
   That is why the FAA specified 61 kts for the stalling speed
   of single engine aircraft. If you crash a twin or a common run of
   the mill
   canard consider yourself dead :) Yes.. they don't stall. They just
   fall out
   of the sky. Anything will fall out of the sky if you get it slow
   enough. If you
   are too close to the ground and the canard stalls you are going
   to hit real hard on the nose. If you are in a hard turn and the
   canard stalls
   the airplane is going to make a sharp turn towards the ground.
   --
   Paul Lamar ...No rotor no motor.



I asked myself this question once, and answered it using the X-Plane
simulator. It allows you to create / edit your own aircraft, including
doing things like adding flaps to Long-ez's & Velocities.

None of them were flyable with flaps, the pitch-down action was more
than you could override with the stick. I played around with a rotating
canard, whose angle of attack automagically increased when flaps were
deployed, but since it was already on the edge of stall when landing, it
was useless. I didn't think of a folding canard, but that should be
doable in X-Plane if someone wanted to test it.

--Kenny A.


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