Flying Wings Vs Conventional Planeforms: A flying wing can never compete against a conventional tailed airplane. I’ve designed and built a number of flying wings and some conventional tailed airplanes. This is my conclusion based on my experiences. I didn’t come up with this idea right away, I started building flying wings based on the idea that weight was the biggest factor in getting an electric plane to perform well so I got rid of anything I didn’t need therefore the natural conclusion was a flying wing. I still think that weight is the biggest factor in getting a plane to perform well. But now we have plenty of power available to the weight incurred in the electric power system.

All things being equal a flying wing cannot perform up against a tailed plane and this is my reasoning.

1. On a conventional wing you have a given wing area for lift. On a flying wing, 10 to 20 percent of that wing is used in a reflex area to counter act against the forward CG that kills the efficiency of the wing. A conventional wing can use a much smaller area in the tail to do the same reflex action. The tail is farther back from the CG and has more leverage; the main wing is cleaner and more effective, generating more lift. The smaller tail surface on a conventional plane also generates less drag than the reflex area on the flying wing.
2. On a conventional wing you can have a flap or camber the ailerons to generate more lift. You can’t do this with a flying wing without doing a split-trailing surface. Any down motion of the flap would have to be countered with an equal motion of the reflex area which would be more like a spoiler action that a flap action to generate more lift. You can’t change the camber of the flying wing without changing its pitch or angle of attack. On the conventional wing you can have a large flap, camber or braking action (raising the trailing edge of the main wing) and you can counter this with a smaller trim action of the tail surface.
3. On a conventional wing you can move the CG from 25% clear back to an extreme 50% on some planes. The flying wing I believe you can get the CG back to maybe 22% or maybe 25% before the wing becomes too unstable to fly. The pitching moment of the wing is so short that just a tiny movement of its trailing surface causes a large change in the angle of attack. You have to set the CG so far forward on a flying wing so that it will behave itself, that this also kills the lifting efficiency of the wing.
4. Because of the reflex in the airfoil shape of the flying wing, it cannot have an efficient airfoil. A conventional wing can have a very efficient airfoil.

So there you have it. Flying wings are great and can look great in the sky but put it up against a conventional plane and it doesn’t have the performance.