For simplicities sake let us call a plane with the primary lifting wing aft of the elevator a canard. Are there any hand launch canard sailplane kits that have great performance characteristics?

Thank you very much for your time.

From : Don Stackhouse

No, none that I'm aware of, and with good reason. Canards don't use the full lifting capabilities of the primary wing, and so they have to carry extra wing area in order to have the same low-speed performance. This increases whetted area, which hurts at all speeds, but especially at high speed, which kills penetration and launch height. To make matters worse, the highest-loaded surface (the canard) also has the worst Reynolds numbers and/or span loading. It's an iffy proposition to make a canard perfomr well at one speed, and when you have to perform well at a wide range of speeds (like a good HLG), it becomes darn near impossible.

About the only time you can get a canard to be a benefit is if you can use it to reduce the weight and whetted area of the fuselage. In the case of a pod-and-boom sailplane layout, there is no excess fuselage weight and whetted area to improve upon.

Don Stackhouse
DJ Aerotech