HI FH HUBER! First of all, the literal translation of foreplane means an aerodynamic surface in front of something, we will guess the wing is meant to be THAT something, so I'm with you about the terms being interchangeable. I recently built a 1/2A canard with a "rudimentary appendage" hanging off the front that I tried to use for pitch control. In order to acheive a certain futuristic fighter look, I made the forplanes 3" by 6" for each half, with a taper towards the tips. I gave the surfaces a lifting airfoil, and hinged it at 25% of the cord. To make a long story short, it didn't work very well. It was very unresponsive when I tried to set the CG forward[like you would for a classic canard design], and when I tried moving the CG back it became too sensitive. I never found a sweet spot.. I'm with you again about canards , and going below the magic number for getting some lift out of it. I'm sure you could go smaller than 4.5" IF the wing loading was low enough. Anyway, I sliced off the foreplanes and ended up with a good flying ZAGI type thing with an .049.