Originally Posted by
ibuild
"You need a wind tunnel and make about a 1000 test models before you can make your model airplane and know what you're doing" - don't give me that crap, it's bollocks.
Until somebody expends some time and effort (money) to develop a series of airfoils in the powered model sizes, it is hit (not much of a hit,really) and miss. Even if you were to have known good airfoils it wouldn't guarantee success when installed on an airplane.
In reality, it doesn't matter much.
Model airplanes all fly pretty bad compared to the big stuff--which is what makes it challenging.
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At a company training class, a couple weeks ago, the instructor said " CFD gives you the wrong answer to the right question, and the wind tunnel gives you the right answer to the wrong question".
That's why even now it takes more than a few development iterations to get a full scale airplane wing/fuselage/nacelle/flaps combination nailed down.