I came across this company while looking at a video from Oshkosh. Looking into it amazed me that this exists. I believe that one day this will be the basic shape of all airplanes and current aircraft will be antiques. I only wonder how this idea has not caught on wholesale in aircraft design....if I were designing airplanes based on todays technology, I'd look at this and state a loud expletive knowing what I'm working on is a horse & buggy compared to a Prius.
So here's the basic shape.
Now the really counter intuitive trick that makes this amazing is the smallish rear horizontal wing up and behind the main wing is set up to create a lot of
Downforce!......Whaaaaa??? Who puts a major flight surface on an airplane to push DOWN?
Theory goes that this creates a huge venturi area between the wings creating way more lift than normally possible for the given sized wing, and, it eliminates the trailing vortex that creates huge amounts of drag, so induced drag is remarkably low.
Reading between the lines this is a 5 place airplane capable of jet like performance using a 200HP diesel engine using 5GPH fuel. That's right, 200+ MPH at 25,000+ feet getting 40MPG in a roomy, quiet, & comfortable cabin. Many design features make this simple and easy to build, the main feature being the main wing has no control surfaces, once these get into mass production they'll be cheap to build.
Here's a diagram showing the airflow effects between the wings, the small upperwing flying "upside down".
In reading a bunch of stuff about this, Burt Rutan is quoted as saying, "Why didn't I think of this."
THEN
THEN
THEN
THEN
