Looking back
Famous canards
A look at notable foreplanes
The big daddy
The one that started it all. For the Wright Flyer, the Wright brothers used a controllable canard that had the effect of destabilizing the airplane, making the airplane incredibly difficult to fly.
Saab Viggen
The former automaker also had some influential airplane designs over the years, including the Viggen, which included the first modern canard. Like other military aircraft that have followed suit, the Viggen’s canard made the aircraft more maneuverable.
Rutan VariEze
Burt Rutan’s VariEze is the shining example of the canard in private aviation. Rutan was a fan of the Viggen and created the VariEze as a way to bring efficiency and safety—not to mention great looks—to homebuilding.
The world’s first airplane had one, and some of the most modern aircraft do as well. Canards (French for duck) are small wing sections mounted forward of the main wing, typically midway up the fuselage.
Often called foreplanes, canards can be useful for a number of purposes, including as an additional lifting surface, for better aircraft stability, or as a control surface. As an additional lifting surface, the canard can allow for a smaller main wing section. Some companies have designed modifications that bolt canards onto existing airframes. Here, the goal is even more lift than the airplane builder had in mind, primarily for better takeoff and climb performance.
Controllable canards generally eliminate the need for the horizontal stabilizer, and enable more aircraft control than a traditional setup. Many modern military fighter aircraft have a canard that pilots control as they would an elevator.
Some canards are there only for better stability. Either in the initial design phase or during flight testing, the engineers realized the airplane would be unstable in pitch and decided to add a foreplane in order to decrease workload on the pilot and make the airplane safer.
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