You must be kidding!

Why the Munch-face and thumbs-down? I’m a Tomcat fanboy too but his post was specifically about WVR, bombtrucking and maintenance. Not exactly points that us Tomcat-fanboys bring out when talking about the plane. 🙂
True the D model’s avionics brought out the strike potential in the airframe but his post was valid anyway.

Oh for f*ck’s sake! Someone post a picture of the Wright flyer (yes it had a Canard) and perhaps this tedious willy measuring can come to an end.

Tedious willy measuring? If you refer to the posters in page 1 and 2, we weren’t discussing who made canards first or whether a canard fighter is better than a conventional or not. Page 3 is just some humorous picture postings. The thread was civilised.

Nice story there Fedaykin,

At the end of term the school sort of turns into a film club as the teachers don’t really want to teach

Hey I recognize this part. 🙂

S’not that im fick, but i just dahn’t get it, yeah?

Innit!!
Now all you have to do is buy a Vauxhall Nova and stick some rims, neons and brand-name stickers on it and you’ll be a genuine chav. Don’t forget your Burberry hat.

Yeah the American exchange pilot was amusing the strip tease was on an old Corsair. I like it at the end when she tells the French pilot that she was just using him for cheap sex and already has a boyfriend.

Ah, Corsair it was. Yes I bet the chavs liked the film, there’s just enough motor in the flight scenes and enough women in-between to keep their four brain cells too occupied to chatter.
What sort of feedback did you get from the MFL teachers? 🙂

Even if it doesn’t, consider getting it for the flight scenes if you can get it for an okay price. With the looks these pilots are giving each other you won’t be in doubt as to what’s going on anyway!
The jet scenes are lovely. Oh, and there’s a US female exchange pilot. She does a nice dance on top of a Mirage.

It’s a given that designers have known about canards forever so why did everybody decide NOW was the time to put them on and then “whoops maybe not”?
With canards if they were such a great idea the next generation would have them too.

We’re not saying putting canards is a great idea for every project out there. No offense and maybe I’m wrong but it seems to me you’re defending MDD, NG etc for not using canards? No one in this thread that I saw is attacking them for it, or proclaiming any unquestionable canard superiority to conventional airframes. I don’t care about what some other guy in some other thread has said about Typhoon vs F-35 or whatever.
I hope I’m not coming across as hostile because believe me I’m not, just trying to adress this theory. And again, no one in this thread is attacking the US houses for not using canards!

As far as I know NO project being designed today has a canard.

Well I haven’t seen any evidence of Dassault, EF, Saab or IAI working on any new fighter projects at the moment. So you can’t really say that they do or don’t still believe in canards.
If Sukhoi doesn’t put canards on their next project, that doesn’t mean that the four other houses wouldn’t have.

And I’m not necessarily disagreeing with however nobody has offered an alternative explanation.

True but I’m trying to say that in my opinion there is no need for an alternative explanation because the first explanation seems to be based on this;
A; ‘Everyone in Western Europe plus Russia and Israel began making canards for their late 90’s/mid-00’s projects because of the ATF concepts’.
The Gripen is a follow-on to the Viggen. Saying they went with canards because they saw some drawings instead of the logical choice – being happy with the Viggen flight performance?
So if they had been unhappy with the canard performance – they would just have continued making canards because of the ATF drawings? Suggests to me that whoever originated the theory was either unaware of the Viggen, ignored it or needed a reality check on how professional design houses make design choices based on experience.

Regardless of the Viggen it’s still a very dubious claim. Of course, saying it’s a dubious claim is just an opinion. However you have one hard fact (Viggen service entry date) and one appeal to logic. (Choosing canards for the next gen because of previous experience, not a drawing in a flight magazine.)

B; ‘Everyone stopped making them all of a sudden’ – not valid in my opinion since the vast majority of the canard-makers aren’t working on a new fighter project.

Again I’m not arguing with you the poster but rather this theory.

P.S. If it indeed was a case of IAI, Dassault and EF copying canard designs (I don’t believe in this either but it would be less of a stretch) it would have been more likely that they took the inspiration from a canard jet that was actually operational in the seventies. As opposed to some public drawings of an important defense and secretive project in a very early stage of development, as you said yourself you couldn’t count on these being accurate and I think Dassault etc knew this too.

You gotta admit it looks strange. EVERYBODY goes with canards and thinks the US is too

But… “everybody” isn’t the case. 🙂 Swedes used canards before the ATF program. As for the EF, Lavi and Rafale having canards because of the ATF concepts, then I suppose you could also say the F-16XL “ripped off” the J 35.

and then the US doesn’t and new designs you see today (Photoshop dreams don’t count) don’t seem to have them? I’d be interested in alternative theories that account for what seems to have happened.

True there have been canardless Sukhoi concepts floating around, but what makes you suggest that SAAB, IAI, Dassault or the EF consortium don’t believe in canards anymore?

F-16XL and J 35 Draken. Personally I wouldn’t go around making claims that GD ripped off SAAB with this. Sometimes if you ask the same question about aerodynamics in two different parts of the world, you get the same answer.

I wasn’t saying the Swedes invented the canard. Just saying (like you did) it was a stretch that the Gripen canards were influenced by the early ATF concepts. 🙂

On a side note, I liked the Rockwell canard experiments. HiMAT, the V/STOL one and the FSW.