Mika Heinonen

Heh, that looks really like an interesting design Karoliina, if I was mean I would say they had some problem with the balance point How's the good old Vari-Ez doing though, it's a single seater, and in my opinion the most beautiful design of an airplane I have ever seen. It's the harmony in perfection. Another canard airplane I really admire is the Lockspeiser LDA-01, it's square, but it has the "something". I don't like the newer layouts though with the single front wheel constellation, it had it's charm at best with the 4 wheel design. Also a one-seater, and you can bring your luggage too. It's the cow of the skies

I am sure going to design an or multiple own aircrafts, but this will be more actual when I can dedicate more time into this, and that is not in near future, alas. However, I have done several radio controlled canard designs, which could be possibly used as basis for 1:1 scale aircrafts too. Mostly I have just done experimental aircrafts, with different size and shape of canard wings, one of my planes had even a negative V-angle canard, and it was an very interesting concept. I don't think money is really an issue, I mean this one crazy finnish guy on the country side designed an conventional radio controlled airplane, then he made a bigger version it, and finally he made the exact same design as a 1:1 man carrying aircraft, and flew with it. The local police confiscated his airplane, but then he made Tiira II, and flew again, and it was confiscated again. Nowadays you can find Tiira II in a finnish aircraft museum. But of course with canards the design on an 1:1 scale airplane is much more complicated, and even professional aircraft companies have failed in calculating the relations correctly - the swedish military's Saab 37 Viggen (not to confuse with Rutan's Vari-Viggen) was a sad example of it.

More of on esthetical opinion here, but I think that the nose gear should be retractable, and the main gear should stay lowered. An airplane which has all gear retracted kinda looks too soulless and empty for me. An alternately solution would be also that the nose gear would still completely retract inside the fuselage, and the main/rear gear would move to an more aerodynamic angle, perhaps preferring the movement to the rear of the plane.

Definately a NASA profile would be the best for the canard elevator in my opinion. I can't remember the profile I have used as generic template in my designs, but it was something like NASA 9206 (totally guessing here now), it was a relatively thick profile with semi-neutral end point stabilization. Well, I prefer to keep the depth of canard wings rather short, and utilize the uplift of the profile at low speeds. Does anyone know of a website with the list and graphics of all NASA profiles?

I just registered to this Forum, and your name, Karoliina kinda got my attention, it is the finnish way of pronouncing that name. I've not designed or build any man-carrying aircrafts yet, but only radio controlled, which are of course much easier to design and build due to the relation of mass to the density of air molecules. However, what I would suggest you is that you make sure that you have sufficient, and maybe even too much ventilation. The fresh air flow is very important when dealing with glass fiber and epoxy harz composites. And maybe also have a eggclock to measure the time you spend in the working room, and go outside every 15 minutes or so.