Yes, those are canards!

At Longmont, CO airport:

A Katmai by Peterson. Modified 182.

MTV

Those are "Doughnut Shelves"

First time I saw an official Katmai was in McCall. Local mechanic got tired of fixing it several times over two days. Kept getting in the way of a bunch of summer"easy-do's.

The shop where I upgraded my 170B had me do the cowl removal as part of my shop space rent once.
Only once. I don't know if the Katmai cowl/canards come off any easier these days but sure hope so.
At least the cowl was already scratched to hell before I started. Don't think I added much damage to the paint. ~~2006

I absolutely love that airplane. It makes me feel so much better about my airplane budget.

I have always wondered why I have never seen a "regular" experimental EAB with canards. Maybe one day we will see a canard on a Bearhawk 4 Place or the like?

By "regular' I am loosely referring to planes like the Zenith 701/750, Rans S6, S7, S20, Bearhawks, or for that matter, even a Vans plane. I know Vans owners however often have a different mission including speed and aerobatics.

We all know planes like VariEze and a few others have canards. If canards can be adapted for STOL on a Cessna 182, why not other similar style aircraft as well. Just curious. Patent Issues ? STC infringement by experimental builders maybe not allowed ?

I think they are pretty awesome planes and Peterson is a great marketing guy but the resale market is where the judgement happens.

When I was reading the Katmai forums there was quite a bit of grumbling about low resale value compared to original spend.

That said, if I had a bunch of $350,000 coins in my pocket, I would probably have one. The short field performance is impressive.

Denali wrote:I have always wondered why I have never seen a "regular" experimental EAB with canards. Maybe one day we will see a canard on a Bearhawk 4 Place or the like?

By "regular' I am loosely referring to planes like the Zenith 701/750, Rans S6, S7, S20, Bearhawks, or for that matter, even a Vans plane. I know Vans owners however often have a different mission including speed and aerobatics.

We all know planes like VariEze and a few others have canards. If canards can be adapted for STOL on a Cessna 182, why not other similar style aircraft as well. Just curious. Patent Issues ? STC infringement by experimental builders maybe not allowed ?

I'm not sure Canards would do anything on a tail dragger. Isn't the main purpose if them to get the nose wheel off the ground and get a good AOA fast? A tail wheel doesn't have that problem, so I feel that cards would be counter effective. Lifting the tail would cause them to push the mains down harder and that could be problematic on soft fields. Just guessing here, but that's what I figure.
David

If you think you are going to be pushing the envelope hard enough to need something greater than a 206 or tubo206. I think dreaming more than flying. As said above / earlier it is still a 182 firewall. My 50C.

A1Skinner wrote:Isn't the main purpose if them to get the nose wheel off the ground and get a good AOA fast?

I got to fly in a Wren 460, the predecessor to the Katmai et al. It performed really well with 2 persons and a bit of fuel- downright impressive. The useful load was really impacted in the old Wren design. It took off and landed roughly as advertised. The cruise was about the same as a 172, though, and I believe it had the stock engine.

According to the demo pilot (and it may have been an owner of the company if I remember) the 182 horizontal stabilizer exerts as much as 200 or 220 pounds downward in a takeoff configuration to offset the pitching moment of the wing. That is like having another heavy person inside the plane, and adds to the stall speed and impacts climb performance. The canard was, according to the pilot, intended as a way to mitigate that problem and improve low speed handling. 200 lbs downwards is roughly 7% more drag from the wing plus the extra drag from the tail to generate the down force in the first place.

I did some googling and it seems that the Peterson 260 & later Katmai are both based on Jim Robertson's Wren 460 which employed double-slotted flaps & spoilers along with the canard. Not sure just how much the canard actually does, but since it's a lot more visible than the wing mods it seems like it's at least partially a marketing ploy. I think if canards were the hot stuff, all the Cub / STOL guys would be using them.

Here's a photo from wiki of (some of ) the Wren mods on a Cessna wing.

4 years ago when my airplane was in the avionics shop at KFNL for the panel mods, there were 2 Katmais in there, also, undergoing complete panel upgrades. The cowl was off of one of them, and I was really surprised at how flimsy the canard attachments and controls appeared to be. Not that they are flimsy, just that they appeared that way to me.

Then late last year, I was doing a runup at the pad for 15 at KFNL, when a Katmai taxied past. There were two aboard, the owner of the avionics shop and another, apparently for an avionics test flight. Granted that it was running light, but it was off the ground about halfway between the numbers and the 1000' hashmarks, and it just levitated, climbing in an almost level attitude. Very interesting.

Cary

I've owned 2 of these Katmai's in the past. One was part of the experiemental 3 that Todd used to get the certification of the King Katmai which is an IO-550 in the plane. The second one I had we built with a P-ponk. The King Katmai with the IO-550 was a monster plane. Both of my planes also had Xtol wings. They would both stall around 30-31 knots. Todd bought the Wren company a long time ago and that's how he got the Canard. He found out through testing that the Canard did about 80% of what the wren would do by itself. So he quit building wrens and just starting selling Canards and refurbishments. His planes are very nice when they are done, but they aren't cheap. I think a loaded Katmai with good avionics redone today will set you back $400k+. My first one I was in $375k and the second one I was in $280k (refurbished it myself). I sold the first one because someone wanted it worse than I did and offered me close to what it cost me and I thought I was done playing with it. A year later, decided to build a second one. Then I decided to go back to a 2 seat Scout like I had before I played with these 2 Katmai's.

In the end, the Katmai makes a 182 a much better airplane IMHO. It truly does lower that angle of attack and makes the site picture better and definitely drops the stall speed so you can land in 200-300 ft easily. If you need 4 seats or lots of room for baggage, the Katmai is hard to beat. I just love the tandem 2 seat taildragger because it is funner to fly and better site seeing.

The ultimate plane for back country camping would be a turbo 206 with the canards. I tried like hell to get Todd to do the STC, but he wouldn't do it. He said he was done with the FAA forever.

joejenie wrote: I tried like hell to get Todd to do the STC, but he wouldn't do it. He said he was done with the FAA forever.

And that right there is one of the main reasons that the 'furtherance' of general aviation has proceeded so slowly!

Pardon my ignorance, but on other canard airplanes, the canard provides lift, not downforce. It's hard for me to believe that applying 200-300 lbs of downforce anywhere on the airplane would be beneficial to STOL operations. If so, the Valdez guys could all just invite me to fly with them, and immediately improve their performance!

It seems a lot more logical that these canards are providing 200-300 lbs of lift, without requiring either extreme angles of attack, thus reducing overall drag. Further, the rotation lift vector of the canard on the forward end of the fuselage would reduce the downforce required to be produced by the elevators and horizontal tail, which would also result in more lift and hence, better STOL performance...

Am I nuts? (OK - let's narrow THAT discussion to the analysis above...!)

JP256 wrote:Pardon my ignorance, but on other canard airplanes, the canard provides lift, not downforce. It's hard for me to believe that applying 200-300 lbs of downforce anywhere on the airplane would be beneficial to STOL operations. If so, the Valdez guys could all just invite me to fly with them, and immediately improve their performance!

It seems a lot more logical that these canards are providing 200-300 lbs of lift, without requiring either extreme angles of attack, thus reducing overall drag. Further, the rotation lift vector of the canard on the forward end of the fuselage would reduce the downforce required to be produced by the elevators and horizontal tail, which would also result in more lift and hence, better STOL performance...

Am I nuts? (OK - let's narrow THAT discussion to the analysis above...!)

Pretty sure they said that the horizontal stab has that much downforce. The canards lessen that force by helping the nose lift. You are right that they provide lift. They work opposite the elevators. So when you pull back to lift the nose, they push down, and vise versa. This is why I feel they could have some opposite affect on a tail dragger. When I push forward to lift my tail in sift conditions, the canard would push down. I feel that this would have the effect of pushing the mains into the soft ground.
Maybe I'm the one who's nuts!

JP256 wrote:the rotation lift vector of the canard on the forward end of the fuselage would reduce the downforce required to be produced by the elevators and horizontal tail, which would also result in more lift and hence, better STOL performance...

The existing 182 reportedly has a couple hundred pounds of downward force on the horizontal stabilizer to offset the normal nose down moment of the wing. That is why you put vortex generators under the horizontal stab if so inclined. The extra downward force creates drag at something a bit larger than the best L/D ratio, so you can imagine that unloading the tail could improve the stall speed as well as low speed handling.

This is no different on a tail wheel aircraft...moment is moment, after all. It isn't as important how you generate it, but efficiencies are distinct.

lesuther wrote:

This is no different on a tail wheel aircraft...moment is moment, after all. It isn't as important how you generate it, but efficiencies are distinct.[/quote]


While I agree, moment is moment, just look at what the canard/horizontal does. On a 182, you pull back and the horizontal goes up, canard down which lifts the nose of the plane. On a tailwheel, you push forward to lift the tail, horizontal does down, canard goes up. To me this would cause the canard to put extra weight onto the nose/mains causing an undesired effect in soft/rough ground. Or am I seeing this completely wrong?

I see what you mean now, and yes, it does seem like it would briefly increase the load on the mains as the tail is lifted initially.