I get the idea, some think I am poking fun at the science of aerodynamics.
Far from it.
My offhanded remarks simply reflect my thoughts that we often fail to see the forest because of all the trees--
Fuselage lift -for example -is extremely important , even in the big boxes we travel around in. (airliners).
On the stealth fighters/bombers- where is the wing? Or the fuselage?


On a good, powered, aerobatic model -- the transition from level to knife to level is greatly infuenced by the area of the fuselage AND - where that area is greatest. (relative cg to wing)
If we were only to use projected area for figuring "wing area "-- then how do we figure span loading??
When doing a tight tumble --the location of the horizontal tailplane, will greatly influence how rapidly the tumbling energy is bled off.
In the early years of working with models - I was always amazed at how very carefully developed airfoils were claimed to be the reason the model flew so well.
Hands on testing showed that in our models - these airfoils were really very minor points of the whole picture.
Powerloading , wing aspect ratio and wing loading probably get my vote as the three most influential points in developing almost any powered model.

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