ORIGINAL: combatpigg
drag chute?
Are you psychic?
Both my attempts at a reply last night mentioned drag chutes.. semi-seriously. As a rocket geek these things tend to come to mind. Wouldn't need much. Split rudder? Drag brakes? Spoilers?
FF: the intention from square one was to design as a V-tail, with conventional as an option. For this quick sketch I dropped in TLAR conventional surfaces, because I wanted to check out the looks that way at first and because I hadn't done any math on the V-tail dims yet. Besides, if someone else were to build one assuming it works, there are folks who have a preference one way or the other. Sure most die-hard go fast folks think V-tails are the bee's knees, but I think regular tails still show up in the winner's circles with some regularity don't they?
As it is shown, the wing is 598 squares, at the target weight of 5.5 - 6.0 pounds - a rough estimate of component weights crudely added together - wing loading sits between 21 and 23 ounces per sq ft. Sounds manageable to me.
MJD