Horizontal tail aspect ratio

[autoreply]

Conventional wisdom says that horizontal tail aspect ratio should be lower as the wings.

I have a pusher design, with the engine just aft of the wing, a slender tailboom and a pusher prop (driven by shaft) on the very end. Single-piece composite conventional stab, downwards fin/rudder. For my design a very slender stab (high aspect ratio) would be beneficial, mostly because the prop is less disrupted by the wake of the stab and also because it reduces interference drag between tailboom and stab.


If we have a very high aspect ratio stab, I can think of several potential drawbacks:

1. Higher structural weight, flutter aspects
2. Lower lift due to lower Re/small chord
3. Lower stall angle of attack, possibly lower as the wing (higher AR gives a lower induced velocity and thus a lower induced angle of attack, reducing the real aoa at stall)
4. Too low elevator stick forces because of extremely low elevator chord

But apart from that, would there be anything else against a very slender stab with an aspect ratio of around 10-12? Apart from the Long EZ I can't think of any design that has one, so I guess I'm missing something, because so far the issues I mentioned aren't too hard to solve, nor is the penalty of doing so very large.

 

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