RCU Forums - View Single Post - Chuck Cunningham's Aerodynamic parameters???
Old 12-10-2003 | 07:44 PM
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Ben Lanterman
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Default RE: Chuck Cunningham's Aerodynamic parameters???

I don't have the charts and information you asked for but I can give a substitute.

In dozens of photos you can see top views and side views of airplanes that are flying in the kind of flight that you are interested in. Scan those in to a computer and make your own versions of the rules. Actually if you look at an airplane you can guess pretty well if it is going to fly right or not. Use those same eye gauging skills when you design your own. The only guess work might be the CG location but there has been some discussion on that subject here before. It can be located with small foam models fairly easily and accurately.

If I wanted to design an aerobatic airplane I would copy something Chip Heyde is flying, scale airplanes - just copy the areas and lengths. Free flight - look at all the models that have been featured through the years in the modelling press. and so on.

The old saying, if it looks right it will fly right is very close to being good. When you step off the beaten track is when things get interesting and Chuck's rules might not work there either. However when things that are flying are analyzed they usually fit into a "rule of thumb" bracked without too much squeezing.