LAST EDITED ON Feb-10-04 AT 06:08 PM (CDT) Bob-
Unfortunately, I'm really short on time to explore and respond to your interesting, but strangely open-ended question. I have researched the history of lifting bodies, BWB's (Blended-Wing Bodies), and low-A/R tailless aircraft extensively. Unfortunately, the ones I discarded are the ones you're mostly interested in - the ones with tails. I have file drawers full of the tailless ones.
Burnelli took out a host of patents as well as fathering several successful flyers. He may have been the victim of unscrupulous government or business descrimination, but just as likely of conservatism. Unless you're going the tailless route, which you have disavowed, there isn't much more efficient for stunt than the Mackey Carousel-like twin boomers, from what I can see. Since you are not really interested in load carrying over long distances at some efficient cruise, you might as well use the best stunt wing and then stick onto it some form of pitch control.
To design to your description, though, it sounds as though you would like a thick, low-A/R wing from which smaller wings protrude, the thick wing being perhaps longer that the chord of a low-A/R flying wing or lifting body. Then it appears that you want a boomed tail for pitch stability/control. The complications arise in determining how much vorticity arises from the liftin-body's contribution to lift and relatedly, how transition occurs to the outer wings. One way around this is to choose a "scale" subject. The other is to experiment using your best guestimate to limit a certain percent of the total lift to the central "wing". That would be fun. A copromise (recommended) is to follow Burnelli to a point, perhaps enlarging the central span, widening the stab/elevator and using shorter (lower A/R) outer spans. You would have something between an old twin-boomed combat plane and a Carousel. However, I wouldn't expect it to outperform a plane whose entire wing was configured for stunt.
Most in the scale or semi-scale realm understandably lies in designs that were publicized and/or patented, but never built nor flown successfully. Junkers joins Burnelli as a champion of the tailed "flying wing". Hence their notoriety in that field. Of course, the majority of the blended-wing-body (BWB) ones are modern jets and haven't gained production past models (yet?). They will probably not make it, despite their efficiency. However, Stanford and others have built and flown the research models.
If you. like me, enjoy seeing what the limits of an unconventional configuration are, then there's much to try out. I have drawn up a lifting body/optionally BWB design that I might build someday, if only because I have seen nothing like it yet from anyone else - an unusual thing for any conceivable design. Usually, if you can imagine it, someone has built it or something like it - often over 80 years ago.
If you are thinking scale or semi-scale models, then there are a few designs (most publicized but never built) that might be stuntable, including blended types by Lamanna, Charpentier, Soldenhoff, Antes, Bohnbrite, Geraci, and a host of low-A/R tailless and annular/joined-wing designs and patents.
You've opened an interesting subject for which many on this forum may question the motivation. It will not be the quest for the best stunter or the most useful. It will be just for your own delight - and those of us who understand that kind of motivation. Like such a plane itself, such aircraft seem to blend one into the other. If you'll let me know more specifically via e-mail what You'd like to see, I can possibly dig up some near examples. I always thought that a scale (not semi-scale) Snyder/Hoffmann "ARUP", Zimmerman (United Aircraft, Chance Vought) V-173 or XF5U-1, or one of the successful annulars (all built had separate fuselages or other structures) would be a good diversion. They can be made to fly well on C/L. You're in a more difficult realm, but if you'll narrow it for me, I'll look around for you. e-mail me, if you want.
SK