Yeah, I'm afflicted with the canard bug... It's worse than Malaria... Or so it seems.
Actually, my father got me interested in canards. He had a really big one in the mid 1950s that flew okay, but it porpoised in level flight as did many others that were built with straight wings and twin booms going forward to the stab and elev mount. We discussed this a lot, and my good friend, Dean Pappas also got in the discussion. The reasoning was that the CP and the CG are too far apart on the normal configuration that is most often used. The model flies off of one or the other until a certain angle of attack is reached, and then it reverts to the other point. The proposed fix was to sweep the wing forward to allow the CP and the CG to be closer together.
The first design that I tried that on ultimately flew extremely well, but only after increasing the elevator area by 150 percent. It seems that the artificial airspeed over the elevator in a normal configuration design is required for proper response. I added the area, and then, at Dean's insistence, added a bunch of nose weight. Glad I did; the ship was still tail heavy! Once we got the CG correct and had the proper amount of elevator area, the ship flew flawlessly. I can't tell you why I haven't persued the canard seriously, as I really believe there is something to them. I did build another one a few years back, but was impatient to test fly it and chose a way-too-windy day. Result: splinters. Trust me, there will be more canards coming from my shop!
Later - Bob Hunt