RA-Aus Canards

[Guest kuzzy]

Hi all

 

Does anybody know of any canard kit available in Australia, or even if there are any (or many) canards registered with RA Aus?

 

I have heard that canards offer the ability to produce faster or more efficient cruise on a smaller engine, does anybody have any knowledge on this?

 

Does anyone have info on the flight characteristics of canards?

 

Anyway, I'd be interested to find out info on canards in Australia, I think they look cool and it seems they may offer some increased performance over conventional aircraft.

 

Anywhoo, many thanks!

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

Hi Kuzzy, Haven't seen to many u/l canards around that are of the newer type. there is however a Falcon. a light weight enclosed canard, they were powered with a 277 rotax. try googal for the web site and vids. there were also a few petrodactyl rag and tube around as well. other than that it may be slim pickens.

 

ozzie

 

 

[Guest browng]

Does anyone have info on the flight characteristics of canards?

Canards have advantages, and disadvantages. The main advantage is that because the canard is designed to stall before the mainplane, an automatic pitch down occurs which effects an auto-recovery from the stall, resulting in no stall 'break' at all, just a 'mushing' down. Disadvantages include design difficulty in fitting flaps as deploying them usually causes a severe pitch down in a canard. Other disadvantages are; generally higher approach speeds, less efficiency of the mainplane due to the use of a small canard with a high lift coefficient, and a larger mainplane with a much lower lift coefficient, this is compounded by the mainplane being in the turbulent airflow from the canard. Many canards tend to have a higher wing-loading than conventional types, I don't know for sure, but I suspect that many originally 'GA' canard designs may not get into the RAAus category due to this higher wing loading.

 

 

[facthunter]

Canards.

 

I think there is a quickie at Gympie with a Norton rotary in it . I believe it is very fast. The Wright brothers first effort was a canard, and had pitch control difficulties. (oversensitive) I know this is a long time ago, but I think it is a characteristic. While it seems logical to flare the aircraft on landing by lifting the nose Up, rather than pushing the tail DOWN to achieve the pitch change, it doesn't seem to work out that way, in reality.

 

The high speed performance may relate to factors, other than the canard configuration, such as small frontal area, laminar flow wing sections, good surface finish, clever wheel enclosure, no struts , higher wing loadings, light composite construction etc. You don't tend to see STOL canards. I've gone off them a bit personally, as a practical design concept, but I would like to hear some other views. Nev....

 

 

[Knighty]

Hi Chris

 

Sounds like you're hooked on the Quickie mate!!!, me too as I like Quickies (Mmmm, need to watch what I say, I cant believe I said that?) I've seen one perform at Natfly about 5 years back and it had the Onan powerplant, it sounded fantastic in the way of 'very unusual' with a mean throb out it just like a Harley chugs on idle. The performance on climbout was SCARY SCARY stuff as I think it only managed 300ft at the end of the 3 mile strip however the cruise once he buzzed the airfield at 500ft circuit height was fairly hot one would say, the darn thing went like a scalded cat. It would be a great little machine if the climbout performance could be improved.

 

Cheers

 

Knighty

 

 

[Guest Macnoz]

Hi all

 

Have a look at his one. It has been advertised before both in the raa mag and ebay.

 

Hard to find by search as "plane" or "tailwheel" are the only key words

 

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/DRAGONFLY-MkII-Tailwheel-CANARD-COMPOSITE-PLANE_W0QQitemZ320163725821QQihZ011QQcategoryZ32635QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

 

[Rob Judd]

The Onan-powered Quickie belongs to John Ten Have and is registered as a homebuilt. There is one Quickie on the RAANZ register but with the high stall speed it most likely snuck in while no-one was looking.

 

I owned Quickie ZK-JGZ briefly but the cost of shipping to Australia was prohibitive.

 

 

[facthunter]

This must be one of the oldest threads dredged ever. Nev

 

 

[pylon500]

No one mentioned the old Catto Goldwing....

 

 

Or the XTC;

 

 

There was at least one of these in Australia once..?

 

 

[facthunter]

The more you look into them the more difficulties emerge. Their rarity tells you something. Nev

 

 

[Rob Judd]

This must be one of the oldest threads dredged ever. Nev

What can I say, Nev. I'm a canard fan.

 

 

[Rob Judd]

Or the XTC;

[ATTACH=full]31326[/ATTACH]

 

There was at least one of these in Australia once..?

Neil France is selling an XTC in kiwiland at the moment, it was on TradeMe last week but the ad expired.

 

 

[facthunter]

Canard is French for DUCK (as in Donald). They don't fly backwards either. I was keen on that sort of stuff once but got over it. They stick on the ground too long, fall backwards when you get out of them, unless they kneel. Go OK once they get up there in cruise, but I don't like pushers (as in Planes) much as everything that falls off goes through the prop if it's a single. and as for the feature of the little wing in front stalling FIRST and supposedly saving me from something terrible, I can give that a miss too. It's a free country (for the moment) so enjoy your passion Rob. Nev

 

 

[Methusala]

My brother, who lives out of the country , has a Rutan Solitaire stored in John's hanger. This was the winning entrant when the US soaring body held a design comp for best home buildable , self launched sailplane in the 80's. It is a lovely thing but not without problems. It is a monowheel design with in-line skate wheels on outriggers trailing from the wing tips. This gives it very poor ground handling. It is powered by a Zenoah 320 opposed 2 stroke twin which retracts into the nose via a lovely piece of electronic/mechanical leverage. Once in the air it climbs adequately and has an l/d around 38:1. It utilises 'spoil flaps' similar to a club Libelle for glideslope control which induce no pitch change in operation. I, as you know, once had a Pteradactyl, which was lovely in mild conditions and would have been quite safe but for the spar tubes being too light-on in wall thickness. Like every thing aeronautical, there are good and bad sides to most designs. I never would have believed that a Europa could crash so tragically as happened up near Hervey Bay but I don't know the details of that one. As I say,"a million ways that an aeroplane can kill you!" Don

 

 

[Rob Judd]

The Solitaire is one rare bird! According to Wikipedia there were only seven registered as at 2011.

 

I remember the Pterodactyl Ascender as well, interesting design indeed.

 

I became interested in canards back in the late 70s when I first read about the Vari-Viggen. Had some correspondence with Burt but by the time my (snail) mail got there he had moved on to composites and was no longer selling the plans to it. I was never really a fan of the VariEze due to the need for long tarred strips, and told Burt that what we really needed was a STOL that could operate off grass. He then designed the Grizzly but never made plans available.

 

Badly wanted a Quickie but was sorely disappointed that it was only available as a full kit. I eventually bought ZK-JGZ in the mid-2000s then couldn't get it shipped from NZ at a reasonable price. Resold to Mark Fitzgerald who is still restoring it down in Timaru. It's one of only four left in that country, of six built. (One exported to Australia, another destroyed)

 

One day, one day.

 

 

[robinsm]

My brother, who lives out of the country , has a Rutan Solitaire stored in John's hanger. This was the winning entrant when the US soaring body held a design comp for best home buildable , self launched sailplane in the 80's. It is a lovely thing but not without problems. It is a monowheel design with in-line skate wheels on outriggers trailing from the wing tips. This gives it very poor ground handling. It is powered by a Zenoah 320 opposed 2 stroke twin which retracts into the nose via a lovely piece of electronic/mechanical leverage. Once in the air it climbs adequately and has an l/d around 38:1. It utilises 'spoil flaps' similar to a club Libelle for glideslope control which induce no pitch change in operation. I, as you know, once had a Pteradactyl, which was lovely in mild conditions and would have been quite safe but for the spar tubes being too light-on in wall thickness. Like every thing aeronautical, there are good and bad sides to most designs. I never would have believed that a Europa could crash so tragically as happened up near Hervey Bay but I don't know the details of that one. As I say,"a million ways that an aeroplane can kill you!" Don

Is that the one in the harvester trailer in John TH hanger?

 

 

[Methusala]

Yes. That's the one. A beautiful thing but won't be out anytime soon unfortunately. Don