C.J.,

Most of what you say is true. His was an early model without
vortilons and had the smaller main wing and larger fuel capacity. His
was a newly purchased airplane. He did not build it. He was doing
slow flight trying to find the edge of the envelope and determine a
safe minimum landing speed. He should have gotten specific training
in a Velocity. There have been many changes since these early ones.
See the following links.

http://www.ez.org/cp76-p2.htm

http://www.ntsb.gov/NTSB/brief2.asp?...LA019& akey=1

Anyway, my point was that I personally would not ride a mush all the
way to the ground.

Joe Schneider
8437R

"C J Campbell" wrote in
message ...

"Paul Tomblin" wrote in message
...
In a previous article, "Roger Long"
om said:
"JJS" jschneider@REMOVE SOCKSpldi.net wrote in message
...
I had a flying buddy do something similar last fall in a
Velocity.
Sort of a falling leaf maneuver that he inadvertently entered
and
A Velocity is a Canard, isn't it? They have some weird issues
with
mushing. Leaving my plane trimmed for the bottom of the green
arc, I was

Yeah, they get into something called "deep stall". I don't know
the
aerodynamics exactly - something about the wing and the canard
being
stalled at the same time or something, but I do remember a test
pilot (and
Shuttle astronaut) getting killed testing this phenomena on a
canard.

Actually, the Velocity will not get into a "deep stall." There was
one
example that did do this a few years ago -- twice! Both times the
plane
landed in water and was salvaged. The pilot was unhurt both times.
The
second time was deliberate. The test pilot even tried to climb out
onto the
nose to break the stall. Although he was wearing a parachute, he
elected to
ride the airplane down as it was descending more slowly than a
parachute
would. A Velocity rep told me that this plane had been modified from
the
original design. Mounting the airplane on a flatbed truck with a
hydraulic
lift to raise the nose identified a problem with the trailing edge
of the
wing. There was a lot of discussion about it in Velocity groups, but
the
"deep stall" problem was peculiar to just this one airplane.

Canard aircraft are designed to have the canard stall before the
main wing,
forcing the nose to drop and break the stall. Consequently you can
never
achieve maximum lift from the main wing because the canard will
always stall
before the wing can reach its maximum angle of attack. Canard
aircraft
therefore need longer runways and often need more runway to land
than they
need to take off. Soft field capability is also limited by the
canard
design. OTOH canard aircraft have less drag in level flight since
both the
canard and the wing generate upward lift. They tend to be much more
fuel
efficient than their tail-feathered counterparts.

There are a few canard aircraft that do have a problem with deep
stalls.
IIRC the Dragonfly is one. And of course the original Wright Flyer
was not
only a canard design, but also was a pusher type with
counter-rotating props
and a variable geometry wing -- just like the "advanced" designs
that NASA
is looking at today.