--------------- I am not sure how heavy loads will work with conventional gear, stearing could be difficult on takeoff. -------------

With conventional gear regardless of weight because the CG of the airplane is aft of the wheel contact with the ground it becomes an unstable system. As the airplane is rolling it hits a bump which offsets the CG from the centerline and it tends to want to keep on going. The tail wheel helps stop this until there is a transistion where the tail wheel is not providing much steering and the tail is not providing much aero help.

When the motor is adequately powerful it can literally blast stability into the system through a thrust vector and the vertical tail. Of course the bigger motor brings torque problems with it.

With a heavy airplane the problem comes with the increased moments of inertia in yaw. Once the airplane starts yawing it takes a lot of directional stability to stop it. You tend to over correct and end up with a ground loop. Again lots of power and directional stability will help keep it going straight.

Trike gear is stable. When you get the airplane moving and a little ground bump hits a wheel the inertia of the CG tends to straighten the airplane out.

------------- Asthetics are not a problem, as funtionality is 1st priority on this plane.

I'm not even sure where I would mount trike gear on a biplane, very little documentation on it? --------------

Look at any trike geared airplane and copy it :-) My main approach.

The main wheels are perhaps 5 percent of the wing chord aft of the CG. Too far aft will make it difficult to rotate to take off attitude. Too far forward will not let the nose gear have enough weight on it to allow steering to occur. The nose gear should be located basically as far forward as structure allows. It allows steering with small side loads, something good for large airplanes but not a problem with models.

You want to allow enough clearance with the aft fuselage to allow rotation to the takeoff angles needed. There is a weight lifting contest held every year that some others may know about, I don't remember the name of it. Sometimes the tail cones are slanted upwards to 20 degrees to allow rotation of the wing. Conventional gear setups in this application can't rotate too far so the wings have to be set at a large angle with respect to the fuselage.

Weight lifting airplanes should probably go with a tricycle gear.

Was this any help???