There is another rather unfortunate consequence to the low lift coefficients generated by flying wings. It took me 5 years of flying flying wings before I noticed it because this was the first one I built that was too heavy. So its been well documented in this thread that wings have lower maximum lift coefficients because of the need for some combo of reflex and washout that actually down-loads the tips. This has a decidedly horrible effect in high speed- high G maneuvering, where high lift coefficients are also needed. In order to pull up, you deflect the control surfaces up to generate the nose up moment, but in this state I was left with an airfoil that has worse-than-normal reflex (in fact, it almost has upsidedown camber) so naturally the thing stalls immediately. It had a very cool effect in the flight performance, in that I was cruising along and would bank and pull up, the aircraft would "slide," if you will. so the flight path wouldn't change, despite the huge angles of attack, until it would finally catch, and then take of like a rocket. It actually looked like cars in the dirt doing a power slide.

So the point of that ramble was that using a conventional tail allows the wing do what it was made to do to its fullest extent: generate lift.

In other news, flying wings as they apply to civil transports have some amazing potential: namely 30% reduction in wetted area for a similar capacity to a conventional transport, and lighter structures (since they are much thicker and has better span loading) among other things. Douglas, and then Boeing did some big time research with Stanford in the 1990's and then all of the sudden things just got real quiet: Which could mean they don't want to advertise their next gen stuff before the 787 has made sufficient sales. Perhaps the first boeing 8XX will be a blended wing body??!?! I hope I hope I hope.

Merry Christmas to all

John