Originally posted by Ron Stahl
If you are starting from clean sheet of paper; something as a old pattern flier that I would like to see is longer tail moments and shorter noses. That is why I got the BVM Bobcat XL over the std Bobcat for the longer tail moment.
Ron,
That has the potential for problems in terms of CG. I never really thought about it until I read Kamp's book, but long tails mean either a long tail pipe, or an engine far behind the CG, and a short nose means more ballast to compensate for the long tail, and/or the engine behind the CG.
Even if you don't mind a long tail pipe and you put the engine on the CG, so its "out of the equation", the ratio of the tail length to nose length has a direct correlation to the weight of the nose vs. the weight of the tail. Since the heavy engine in most prop planes is in the nose, it helps out in the balance department, but it does no good for us. Most of the other equipment in the jet is fairly light (fuel needs to be near the CG and can't be counted as ballast, except for an always-full header or UAT), that means lead in the nose - and the farther forward you carry it, the less you have to carry...
Bob