Induced drag reduction from tandem wing Induced drag is proportional to the square of span loading. The normal method to decrease it would be to increase span. This, however, leads to an exponential weight increase.
So, my question is, if tandem wings are placed with a large longitudinal gap, so as to avoid downwash, would they act as independent wing spans sharing the weight of the aircraft to reduce induced drag? If so, how large would this gap need to be? Would one at the nose and another at the tail be enough?
The downwash is about as high as wide, and angled only by a few degrees (more at slow speed). So the longitudinal distance needs to be many times longer than the wing span to make the wings independent.
And it would still be less efficient than increasing the span:

If you double the span, you will decrease induced drag four times.
If you half the lift, you also decrease the induced drag four times, but then you add the second wing to get your lift back and that also doubles the induced drag, so you have half the induced drag, not quarter.