hey, I'm just talking RC, small fliers from 3" to 40", it indeed is a different animal when you are talking full scale, hehe.

Actually, you can do plenty of real world observations in this area as long as you low tech it, ie. tape the weights on, carve some simple foam for it's entire construction, use the glue gun to attach things and see how the glide tests go with your original prototype, I can build many planes in one day with simple hand tools and spending pennies on materials. When you get into this on a larger scale, we have a much larger set of molecules to deal with for the air that it's cutting through as well as the structure needs to be addressed in a larger way just to hold it's own weight much less the stress, so it becomes much more predictable yet clearly requires more thought into the initial construction, along the full scale end compared to the small RC's, they figured out there was as threshold when they broke the sound barrier, the same mini thresholds are in play with the smaller models, can you imagine the performance any 3d RC plane would have if it were scaled up to true scale, it would be horrible.

To accurately use "physics" on this, you have to take one plane, one wing, one weight ratio, one, scale one temperature, baromter, etc., it goes on forever guys. You then have a working model to base your "math" upon, but it will only apply to that one plane, one model, one wing size, etc. The experts do NOT have it all down, the chapter upon the proper anything is not written in stone, I have plenty of "real world" expamples, you want vid, PM me........ My designing criteria are into lift bodies, flying wings and of course saucers, traditional planes are just cake, they are just beyond predictable and by nature are really just a counter weight in the air.

Edited it here, just wanted to give this new guy some kind of thumbs up for his effort, where is your web site you assembled about this stuff?