if the main wing is modified to provide improved
characteristics and would reduce landing speed significantly, say ten mph,
is a corresponding and equal modification required to the canard?
Bill,
It depends. Lets talk stall speed, but its really angle of attack that makes the difference.
As a thought experiment, lets say you make the wing stall at 10 kts. The canard still stalls first-at 50 kts or so, so the possibility of a deep stall is avoided. Now in effect, the aircraft stall speed remains limited by the canard, but a wing with substatially reduced stall speed should produce greater lift at slower speed than the same untreated wing. Therefore the approach speed can be reduced a bit (still 50 + reasonable margin) without experiencing the sink you might currently get at very slow approach speed. On the other hand, to truly take advantage of whats done, the canard stall speed should also be reduced, but never below that of the wing. That can be done in several ways. The two easiest are changing the canard angle of incidence or adding lift enhancing devices ie. vortex gens, flaps, slats etc. The micro vortex generators treat both the wing and canard. I'd be interested in any first hand experience with them.
Quite frankly, I'm very reluctant to play with the canard angle of incidence. I think one could get into very serious trouble with that.
