A ready asked me the purpose of the odd-looking fin projecting downward from the nose of the Defiant on the cover of our August 2011 "Rutan Retrospective" issue. It’s the rudder. Rutan called it ...

Rutan flew the Defiant as his personal aircraft for years ... Something else that was unusual: There were no rudder pedals in front of me. The only rudder pedals are on the right side.

Rutan did it by increasing the wing area and making it and the rudder of lighter-weight foam ... Rutan designed the Defiant with one engine at the rear to push, the other at the nose to pull.

Rutan quickly learned to use the outward-only rudders to help with banking — swept-wing airplanes lend themselves to steering with the rudder ... and the twin-engine Defiant.

OSHKOSH, Wisconsin -- The Boomerang, designed by aviation legend Burt Rutan, is one of those creations ... Clements says the rudder pedals are rarely touched during flight, something unheard ...

Two of them hang from the ceiling of the museum — the Ames Dryden-1, designed to explore the piloted flight characteristics of the pivoting wing, and the Rutan Defiant 1978, which Rutan said he ...