Tina

>
> Yes, the time my son spent with canard aircraft brought out all sorts
> of interesting information about canards and the history of trying to
> scale up Rutan's original concept Beech Starship. The smaller true
> canards like the Long-eze are pretty good aircraft. However there is
> a reason why we don't see large (six plus passenger) true canards.
> It's the relationship between CG, fuel load, payload and range.
> Apparently in the scale up process there is a point where it is no
> longer practical.
>
> Ron Kelley

Would it not also be true that passive stability is not as important
in larger modern airplanes? I would guess (again, I admit being
ignorant of the realities) that adding a 10% aerodynamically induced
increased load on bigger aircraft would be avoided for efficiency
reasons? It might be better to have enough fly by wire and computer
induced stability instead. I don't know enough about this stuff to
even find the back of an envelope, let alone do a calculation there.