Originally posted by Frosty
I'm sure you have a wonderfully scientific explanation for this, and I'm dying to hear it.
Not really as scientific as you would probably like (sorry to disappoint you) but there is a reason you don't make the tailfins that long, no matter how thin they are, and the angle they make with the line of the plane looks too steep to do Mach 10000 or whatever unGodly speed it reached in the movie
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My canards observation is a little more based in reality than the tailfins. Canards are used to give the fighter more manueverability at low speeds by (and someone correct me if I'm wrong, I may be mixing this up with the ?X-27's? forward swept wings) keeping the plane in a constantly unbalanced state. I'll liken it to a tightrope walker rythmically swaying back and forth, constantly correcting himself. THis gives the fighter great manueverability (back to the tight rope walker, how much energy does it take to knock him one way or the other? the answer is not much) but the drawback is that the canards also disrupt the airflow before it gets to the wings. This is great for subsonic flight, because you have already created a pressure differential before the wing gets into the action thereby giving you more lift. Supersonic flight is another story though. (this is where my bad memory could damn me) I believe I remember reading something about the supersonic barrier that if the edge of a wing crosses the barrier, the shock wave propagates down the edge of the wing. If this hapenned with a canard, the resulting shock wave (actually percussion wave) could shear the wings off the plane.
Other than that I don't think the canard is practical above Mach 1. the only instances I can remember are the X-27 (correct me if I'm wrong) and the SAAB Vickers, both subsonic planes.
(I think I just proved myself wrong. I thought of another plane that has a canard that is supersonic, the concord) Oh well, I'll post this anyway, maybe someone else can pick up where I left off- or you can just make fun of me Frosty, whichever you like
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And by the way, Frosty do you not like my scientific explainations? I detect a note of sarcasm in that post (no, not on this board)
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