You beat me to it. That was my favorite design for distance competitions with my brothers and cousins when I was a kid. When you got it right it really sailed.
Sorry, Belarus cannot even claim "developed". I saw that style design on homebuilt aircraft at the 1999 EAA Oshkosh Airshow. "Commercialized" may be the only verb left to claim...
Wikipedia states that this design was originally tried in 1906. If it's better than standard wing designs, why isn't it already used in today's airplanes?
Small plane looked very unusual. Silver fuselage with Zadornov protruding propeller blades, the wheels of the chassis, almost invisible in tall grass, and ... the complete absence of wings! Because neither the language is not turned to name or pen to be raised on a strange chart «pribambase», literally wrapping the fuselage, a noble word «plane». Puny «body» plane is placed in a huge, slightly flatten the top metal «down» with the bottom and the lid!
the reality is that aircraft wings are pretty well thought out by now and 'new' ideas such as this usually have significant drawbacks that are already known. usually that information is left out of the marketing hype of the 'new' concepts. the drawbacks usually include one or more of the following : heavy, active system (you don't want a airplane that won't glide when the power quits), difficult or expensive to build, and the ever popular flying-qualities-not-as-good-as-a-regular-wing-despite-overblown-claims.
Semi-related: Burt Rutan's TED talk has a mention of early aircraft design and how many different designs there were (with slide pictures). Worth checking out.
Chiffonade, this is simply not the forum for that. It contributed nothing to the discussion and actually took away from it in some regards. This forum is for intellectual discussion, it'd be really appreciated if you respect that in the future. Thanks!
