Post #2043136
2026-05-05 20:37 UTC
@ikluft@avgeek.social weirdly, you can kinda remove the vertical stabilizer and move the horizontal stabilizers to the front and it works. But pilots are polarized around whether this looks "elegant" or "dumb". 😁
Replies (1)
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@ikluft@avgeek.social 2026-05-05 20:48
@intrepidhero@vmst.io I know where you're going with that. 😀 You're describing a canard airplane. They actually don't remove the vertical stabilizers - at least in Rutan designs and derivatives, they moved them to the wingtips. If you want a stable and controllable plane for the pilot, there needs to be vertical surfaces toward the back to provide yaw-axis stability and control. Pretty much only military designs put up with unstable handling, usually augmented by computer. Here's a canard example...