Small wing on the front, like a canard??

[Butch777]

I've got lots of pusher type planes, Flying wings, slow and fast, Strykers, Microjets, Projeti, Velocity and more.
I've noticed that the Stryker type with a fuselage out front seems more stable in pitch.
Would putting a small non-moveable canard type wing up front help the stability??
I've seen several military jets with strake type wings up front.
Any Ideas?? Thanks, Butch

[Sparky Paul]

It probably wouldn't hurt, as long as the surface area isn't too large. 5% of the wing maybe, but anything larger would get into canarding for real, which is somewhat of a pain.

[yoyoML]

I've got lots of pusher type planes, Flying wings, slow and fast, Strykers, Microjets, Projeti, Velocity and more.
I've noticed that the Stryker type with a fuselage out front seems more stable in pitch.
Would putting a small non-moveable canard type wing up front help the stability??
I've seen several military jets with strake type wings up front.
Any Ideas?? Thanks, Butch

Putting a canard up front, without any other modifications, will most likely hurt the stability. It's simply that adding a canard moves the neutral point forward, which reduces the static margin, which reduces stability.

With a "fuselage" out front is a whole different thing. It usually means the cg is more forward, which increases the static margin, which increases stability. You naturally notice this comparing a flying wing to the Stryker, I suppose.

[BMatthews]

I believe that those strakes is to divert air over onto the Leading Edge Extensions to help fill the low pressure bubble at high angles of attack. At least that's what I read. Definetly nothing to do with stability for the full sized stuff. If anything they are moving towards being very NON stable with computer stability augmentation. It provide them with planes that maneuver well but at a price.

But all this has very little to do with our models. As the others sort of suggested in different ways I think you would be better off investigating and studying why those models with fuselages seem to fly better than the others. You'll likely find that it's a lot more to do with the CG and neutral point relationship for each of the models you're looking at.